The vast majority of people who look at my driver's license are not the working for the government. The vast majority of people who use any identity are not the

The vast majority of people who look at my driver's license are not the working for the government. The vast majority of people who use any identity are not the government. The government simply provides a form of verification because we have nothing better. They will punish you if you counterfeit a piece of physical identity, so this discourages counterfeits. A trust-based cryptographic network could conceivably serve part of that purpose, by making explicit and immediately verifiable the informal networks of trust that already exist.