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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Your SSN was your driver's license number in 29 states until 2004, when Bush outlawed the practice.

Many, many institutions in the USA are built on it being a high-trust society. Now that it's falling into a low-trust state, we can expect those institutions to fail, and perhaps the state to as well.

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They weren't supposed to be used as any kind of important, general ID number. It took various governments and institutions a long time to wake up to the reality that, because we really, really need such an ID and the government has displayed no intention of ever creating one, social security numbers had been forced into the role by necessity.

> Many, many institutions in the USA are built on it being a high-trust society. Now that it's falling into a low-trust state, we can expect those institutions to fail, and perhaps the state to as well.

Not enough people understand this, but I'm encouraged whenever I hear from those who do.

This raises the question of how we start planning now to build more appropriate institutions to avoid societal failure.

Locally, generally. Remember Gall's Law: "A complex system that works is inevitably found to have evolved from a simple system that works." Also much easier to rebuild trust in a smaller community.

I'd kinda love to blog about blue-sky social theories, but I suspect that without grounding in actual working social systems, they would remain theories.

Kind of a nitpick, but presidents don't outlaw things. Laws passed by Congress do that, and you're right, it was in 2004. Bush signed the law, but it passed by a huge majority.

https://www.ssa.gov/legislation/legis_bulletin_010705.html

I'd initially phrased it "Bush signed a bill that outlawed...", which is much more correct, but is also an awkward sentence construction to read. Figured people would understand what I meant.

...this is also an apropos discussion for this topic, where the Missouri governor is framing this discussion in a way that's technically false but is going to score points with his constituents.

Using your SSN for your driver's license would have been fine in a society where the SSN wasn't also being treated by banks etc. as a way to authenticate you for credit/loans/accounts.

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