Here's a different take on it: in my country, the government is already roughly an identity provider -- drivers licenses, passports and birth certificates are c

Here's a different take on it: in my country, the government is already roughly an identity provider -- drivers licenses, passports and birth certificates are commonly required as identification when signing up for things like rental agreements, jobs, bank accounts, etc. These are issued by state or federal government. Yes, this isn't implemented as something you can integrate with over the internet using SAML 2.0 or oauth or whatever, but it still happens with much older tech (writing + paper + anti-counterfeiting tricks + bureaucracy). James C. Scott's book "Seeing Like a State" makes a pretty good argument that the state wants to arrange society in such a way that it is legible and tractable to central bureaucracy in such a way that the state can efficiently pursue the state's goals -- collecting taxes or crushing political dissent or so on. So separately from if the state "should" do it, or if it is a "good idea" or not, the state will do it if they think it will help the state achieve its aims, and the population or some other powerful party doesn't resist it.