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The US has three dumb points pushing back on this. The first is religious nuts who think it would be a "mark of the beast" The second is anti-government types

The US has three dumb points pushing back on this. The first is religious nuts who think it would be a "mark of the beast" The second is anti-government types who are, well, anti-government anything. The third is many business owners, because it would become much harder/risky to hire illegal immigrants to work.

autoexec 2y ago
The "mark of the beast" types are pretty much fine with cards that have chips in them, but they really hate it when you threaten to implant those chips into people and they want cash to remain an option - same as the anti-government types. I don't share their apocalyptic or anti-government concerns, but I'm actually kind of grateful for their passionate opposition to both of those things anyway. I don't really want an implant and the option of using cash is a very good thing. The anti-government types do hate the idea of a national ID, but they're already forced to carry a drivers license/state ID, and SS card so they've pretty much lost the battle already. I'm afraid that it's the business owners who are our biggest hurdle.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Eh, depending on the flavor, the mark of the beast types don’t even really like barcodes. Allegedly Hobby Lobby does not use a barcode inventory system for this reason.
  - bmelton 2y ago
    Hobby Lobby's CEO provided a handy list of reasons why they do not use bar codes, none of which have anything to do with them being marks of beasts https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hobby-lobby-mark-of-the-beast/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hobby-lobby-mark-of-the-be...
    - autoexec 2y ago
      I will say that their list of reasons is deeply flawed. > Human beings can't read a bar code. - they can, and more importantly they almost never have to > A lot of our product comes from cottage industries in Asia that couldn't mark their goods with bar codes if they tried. - They can be added at the store/warehouse level, not every product needs one, and I've never seen a store that worked entirely on bar codes 100% of the time anyway. > Inventory control by computer is not as accurate as you think. - This assumes what I think, and it only needs to be more accurate than your current method. If it actually weren't more accurate, I don't think they'd have to fall back on "as you think" in their argument. > Employees take more pride in their work when they know they are in charge, not some faceless machine. - this doesn't even make sense. > Customer service is better. - questionable, but not impossible to support > The time savings at check-out is minimal — and easily squandered. - possible, but time savings at checkout is only one benefit. - Reprogramming the computer for sales would take a huge effort in our case, because we put so many individual items on sale each week. - It would take effort, but stores with much more inventory manage it just fine, even when new products are constantly coming in and sales are weekly. > Twenty million dollars is a lot of money. - I have no idea from the article what this is in reference to. Maybe the amount it would take for them to make the the switch? It's hard to say how much money it would save them so it's fair to say cost is a concern. I will say that over a long enough time period, it'd probably save more than it costs. None of this means that concern over "the mark of the beast" is really the reason, but the reasons they gave don't make a lot of sense either. It could just as easily be that poor record keeping and manual entry at the register allow them commit fraud or something. I suspect that if the mark of the beast plays any role at all, it's that no having barcodes panders to the christian customer base they've always heavily pandered to. Even just the rumor is basically viral marketing for them to that crowd.
      - quohort 2y ago
        How about this: without barcodes, you can't replace your clerks with self-checkout machines
        autoexec 2y ago
        I'm not sure that's true, but it would make it more difficult since it'd be easier for customers to cheat. You'd need more monitoring than most stores at the very least.
- quohort 2y ago
  It doesn't need to be a national ID, it could just operate on a state-level like drivers licenses currently do.
nine_k 2y ago
Correct. But not insurmountable. Make the ID card optional, so that it simplifies things if you have it, but still allows operation without it. If 80% of law-abiding population has the card, only the stubborn deniers will remain targets of easy identity theft and fraud based on it. Partly it will stop being worth the effort, partly it will serve as a good control group. Allow but do not require to use the card for employee identification. Whoever insists on hiring undocumented immigrants, could continue. Most industries don't do that, and would reap the benefits of a more secure identification. Don't make the card universal. A bank card with a chip does not identify you for governmental agencies, but prevents a lot of PoS fraud. It could prevent credit fraud if banks allowed me to require the card to take a loan in my name, or to make a transfer larger than $10, and provided the card identity check service to each other and to credit unions. Phones with NFC can read bank cards, so it's a good way to say "it's me, I confirm" in a secure way. Evolutionary, opt-in, piecemeal solutions often have higher chances to succeed than abrupt all-at-once changes.
- hattmall 2y ago
  >Most industries don't do that They absolutely do, but most of the immigrants have a form of ID that gives the companies some measure of deniability. As long as the I-9 goes through, not my problem. If it doesn't, well that's where contractors come in. Official numbers say around 14 million illegal immigrants. Reasonable estimates are closer to 22 and some non-hyperbolic estimates go as high as 40 million.
- croemer 2y ago
  If it's optional, then one would need to be able to have a central database of people who have IDs and want providers to require them. Otherwise there's no protection against impersonation if IDs aren't mandatory.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Indeed. But a federated database is fine, too; this is how Visa and MasterCard work. Imagine having a bunch of ID cards in you wallet, like you already have (driver's license, library card, office access card, store loyalty card) that all have interoperable smartcard interface, and a QR code of their built-in public key. They would be much like contactless bank cards you also keep in your wallet. Banks and phone network operators are uniquely positioned to sell a validation service for such cards, being highly connected and already having data about their existing customers, which would be an easy initial audience pool.
77pt77 2y ago
> The third is many business owners, because it would become much harder/risky to hire illegal immigrants to work. Big one, but even though employing illegal immigrants is a crime, it's almost never prosecuted.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  It's trivial as an immigrant to get a (stolen) SSN. Business owners are not responsible for checking if the SSN is stolen or not.
sneak 2y ago
There is another group: those of us who think the trend of requiring ID to transact is a dangerous one. One doesn’t need to be anti-government to fear governmental intrusion on one’s rights without due process. Our current government does that now.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  > those of us who think the trend of requiring ID to transact is a dangerous one. agree and second -- history shows that this sort of thing goes badly due to "humans"
willmadden 2y ago
Governments murdered hundreds of millions of their own people during the 20th century, and the 21st is shaping up to tell the 20th to hold its beer. Any proposal for modern ID needs to have Constitutional protections, checks, and balances or it will eventually devolve into a digital police state.
- XorNot 2y ago
  How? Everyone's like "a government went on and extermination campaign" and for some reason what would've stopped them is the difficulty in identifying who to exterminate? As though genocides much care about accuracy. The big secret of Nazi Germany that isn't a secret at all I is that they put a lot more then just Jews in those camps.
  - willmadden 2y ago
    There are key differences between today and the 20th century that you are ignoring. Widely enforced digital ID not only makes it easier for them to identify who to genocide, it forces total compliance with the state, because if you do not fully comply, you risk death, imprisonment, or having your freedom and bank account revoked.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      I mean surely then nations with little in the way of digital or personal ID are definitely immune to genocides and do not in fact make up the vast majority of extant genocides committed in recent years or throughout history...[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  A lack of national ID cards would not have hindered the Nazis in carrying out mass murder one bit.
  - willmadden 2y ago
calculatte 2y ago
You're forgetting the entire political left, who claim only whites are intelligent enough to get IDs.

autoexec 2y ago

The "mark of the beast" types are pretty much fine with cards that have chips in them, but they really hate it when you threaten to implant those chips into people and they want cash to remain an option - same as the anti-government types. I don't share their apocalyptic or anti-government concerns, but I'm actually kind of grateful for their passionate opposition to both of those things anyway. I don't really want an implant and the option of using cash is a very good thing. The anti-government types do hate the idea of a national ID, but they're already forced to carry a drivers license/state ID, and SS card so they've pretty much lost the battle already. I'm afraid that it's the business owners who are our biggest hurdle.

bobthepanda 2y ago
Eh, depending on the flavor, the mark of the beast types don’t even really like barcodes. Allegedly Hobby Lobby does not use a barcode inventory system for this reason.
- bmelton 2y ago
  Hobby Lobby's CEO provided a handy list of reasons why they do not use bar codes, none of which have anything to do with them being marks of beasts https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hobby-lobby-mark-of-the-beast/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hobby-lobby-mark-of-the-be...
  - autoexec 2y ago
    I will say that their list of reasons is deeply flawed. > Human beings can't read a bar code. - they can, and more importantly they almost never have to > A lot of our product comes from cottage industries in Asia that couldn't mark their goods with bar codes if they tried. - They can be added at the store/warehouse level, not every product needs one, and I've never seen a store that worked entirely on bar codes 100% of the time anyway. > Inventory control by computer is not as accurate as you think. - This assumes what I think, and it only needs to be more accurate than your current method. If it actually weren't more accurate, I don't think they'd have to fall back on "as you think" in their argument. > Employees take more pride in their work when they know they are in charge, not some faceless machine. - this doesn't even make sense. > Customer service is better. - questionable, but not impossible to support > The time savings at check-out is minimal — and easily squandered. - possible, but time savings at checkout is only one benefit. - Reprogramming the computer for sales would take a huge effort in our case, because we put so many individual items on sale each week. - It would take effort, but stores with much more inventory manage it just fine, even when new products are constantly coming in and sales are weekly. > Twenty million dollars is a lot of money. - I have no idea from the article what this is in reference to. Maybe the amount it would take for them to make the the switch? It's hard to say how much money it would save them so it's fair to say cost is a concern. I will say that over a long enough time period, it'd probably save more than it costs. None of this means that concern over "the mark of the beast" is really the reason, but the reasons they gave don't make a lot of sense either. It could just as easily be that poor record keeping and manual entry at the register allow them commit fraud or something. I suspect that if the mark of the beast plays any role at all, it's that no having barcodes panders to the christian customer base they've always heavily pandered to. Even just the rumor is basically viral marketing for them to that crowd.
    - quohort 2y ago
      How about this: without barcodes, you can't replace your clerks with self-checkout machines
      - autoexec 2y ago
        I'm not sure that's true, but it would make it more difficult since it'd be easier for customers to cheat. You'd need more monitoring than most stores at the very least.
quohort 2y ago
It doesn't need to be a national ID, it could just operate on a state-level like drivers licenses currently do.

nine_k 2y ago

Correct. But not insurmountable. Make the ID card optional, so that it simplifies things if you have it, but still allows operation without it. If 80% of law-abiding population has the card, only the stubborn deniers will remain targets of easy identity theft and fraud based on it. Partly it will stop being worth the effort, partly it will serve as a good control group. Allow but do not require to use the card for employee identification. Whoever insists on hiring undocumented immigrants, could continue. Most industries don't do that, and would reap the benefits of a more secure identification. Don't make the card universal. A bank card with a chip does not identify you for governmental agencies, but prevents a lot of PoS fraud. It could prevent credit fraud if banks allowed me to require the card to take a loan in my name, or to make a transfer larger than $10, and provided the card identity check service to each other and to credit unions. Phones with NFC can read bank cards, so it's a good way to say "it's me, I confirm" in a secure way. Evolutionary, opt-in, piecemeal solutions often have higher chances to succeed than abrupt all-at-once changes.

hattmall 2y ago
>Most industries don't do that They absolutely do, but most of the immigrants have a form of ID that gives the companies some measure of deniability. As long as the I-9 goes through, not my problem. If it doesn't, well that's where contractors come in. Official numbers say around 14 million illegal immigrants. Reasonable estimates are closer to 22 and some non-hyperbolic estimates go as high as 40 million.
croemer 2y ago
If it's optional, then one would need to be able to have a central database of people who have IDs and want providers to require them. Otherwise there's no protection against impersonation if IDs aren't mandatory.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Indeed. But a federated database is fine, too; this is how Visa and MasterCard work. Imagine having a bunch of ID cards in you wallet, like you already have (driver's license, library card, office access card, store loyalty card) that all have interoperable smartcard interface, and a QR code of their built-in public key. They would be much like contactless bank cards you also keep in your wallet. Banks and phone network operators are uniquely positioned to sell a validation service for such cards, being highly connected and already having data about their existing customers, which would be an easy initial audience pool.

77pt77 2y ago

> The third is many business owners, because it would become much harder/risky to hire illegal immigrants to work. Big one, but even though employing illegal immigrants is a crime, it's almost never prosecuted.

Workaccount2 2y ago
It's trivial as an immigrant to get a (stolen) SSN. Business owners are not responsible for checking if the SSN is stolen or not.

sneak 2y ago

There is another group: those of us who think the trend of requiring ID to transact is a dangerous one. One doesn’t need to be anti-government to fear governmental intrusion on one’s rights without due process. Our current government does that now.

mistrial9 2y ago
> those of us who think the trend of requiring ID to transact is a dangerous one. agree and second -- history shows that this sort of thing goes badly due to "humans"

willmadden 2y ago

Governments murdered hundreds of millions of their own people during the 20th century, and the 21st is shaping up to tell the 20th to hold its beer. Any proposal for modern ID needs to have Constitutional protections, checks, and balances or it will eventually devolve into a digital police state.

XorNot 2y ago
How? Everyone's like "a government went on and extermination campaign" and for some reason what would've stopped them is the difficulty in identifying who to exterminate? As though genocides much care about accuracy. The big secret of Nazi Germany that isn't a secret at all I is that they put a lot more then just Jews in those camps.
- willmadden 2y ago
  There are key differences between today and the 20th century that you are ignoring. Widely enforced digital ID not only makes it easier for them to identify who to genocide, it forces total compliance with the state, because if you do not fully comply, you risk death, imprisonment, or having your freedom and bank account revoked.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    I mean surely then nations with little in the way of digital or personal ID are definitely immune to genocides and do not in fact make up the vast majority of extant genocides committed in recent years or throughout history...[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
A lack of national ID cards would not have hindered the Nazis in carrying out mass murder one bit.
- willmadden 2y ago

calculatte 2y ago

You're forgetting the entire political left, who claim only whites are intelligent enough to get IDs.