Weirdness at the Department of Motor Vehicles

Only in a bureaucracy could this happen...and when it happens in a democratic country, it's time for a vote to dismantle the bureaucracy...

Every few years Americans traditionally renewed our drivers' licenses. Through most of the twentieth century, the focus of this exercise was on updating the pictures of our faces, which typically look different after five or ten years have passed. My last mugshot was extremely, and deliberately, unflattering; my weight hasn't changed since it was taken but the few people who've seen it have always exclaimed that I must've lost a lot of weight. There is a consensus that the mugshot before last still looks more like me than the last one does. I was willing to give the D.M.V. a chance to take a more realistic-looking picture.

This year, though, blaming the coronavirus, the letter from the D.M.V. said they weren't renewing pictures, and were asking people just to indicate whether the basic information on the license had changed, stick a money order into an envelope, and mail it to them. (Or, if they were anti-American enough and stupid enough, type the information into scannable, hackable, spyware-infested electronic devices which, if linked to "our secure web site," would compromise the security of that web site--on the presumption that most evildoers would at least find it easier to steal identity information off the fools' cell phones than to steal it off the D.M.V. database.)

The amount of the money order was not exactly made clear in the letter. Apparently there were at least four different possibilities and, each time I read the letter, it sounded as if a different one was applicable. I called the one phone number that had been set up for all D.M.V. questions for the entire state. Not surprisingly, I didn't get any information there. I finally looked up the information online, although of course the information the D.M.V. uses must never, never, never be transferred, no matter how secure they think their web site is, through the Internet outside the D.M.V. site, where it is not secure. That the D.M.V. web site is set up to encourage people to type that information into their own computers--or even their "smartphones," spare us all--is a crime that ought to get several idiots in the D.M.V. banned from employment in any job where they might have access to a computer, for the rest of their lives. Anyway, the web site mentioned only the cheapest of the four different fees the letter had mentioned. I liked that answer and decided to send them the amount the web site mentioned.

Well, first I waited through the quarantine thing. Then I waited to convince an older relative that I was disease-free enough to do an odd job to earn the money. Then that person had to do the quarantine thing. Then I waited to borrow the money from someone who was feeling poor and grumpy, which is probably a symptom. This person uttered fighting words, in the presence of a person of Irish descent who was worried about a sick relative, and instead of snapping back I just sat there thinking "Oh mercy, this person is older than the one I was supposed to have been working for this weekend, and probably this one ought to be doing the quarantine thing." I am getting older but that's still something in the snow-on-the-fourth-of-July category that nobody should plan on ever seeing again. But I finally got the cash, in time to mail it in before the end of the month, so this morning I tucked the cash into the envelope and headed out to the post office.

The post office occupies one half of one block in my town, and the D.M.V. occupies the other half. People who are new in town often park on the D.M.V. side when they are going to the post office.

So on the way into town I was offered a lift, and we got to talking about where we were going, and without even thinking about it the driver pulled up in front of the D.M.V. I got out and started to walk across the parking lot to the post office.

But wait! What was going on? The D.M.V. was not closed. A person who was going in said "Do you have an appointment?" I didn't. "I don't either," the person said.

Well. Why would anybody spend five dollars to buy a money order and send it by certified first class mail when they could just open a door and hand the contents of the mail around the door?!

I opened the door and showed the envelope to an employee...and the employee said, with genuine fear, as person held the form and the amount of money requested in cash, "I'm not allowed to process the payment while you're here! I have to set up an appointment! You have to use the web site or the one phone line for the entire state to set up an appointment!"

We the people of these United States need to take a stand. Government employees have to respect the valuable time of the taxpayers on whom they depend for the food they eat. Any time anyone who is being paid out of our tax money dares to suggest that we call someone else, go somewhere else, or come back another day, as distinct from saying "Please may I go and do that right now, just to make sure that this is done correctly today so that I won't be asked to interrupt your valuable time to correct any mistakes I might make," there needs to be some major adjustment in that government office. We are the employers. Government officials are the employees. We need to stop paying them for presuming that, if granted an audience with us on one day, they can expect to take up any more of our time in their current lifetime. It needs to become automatic:

IF A GOVERNMENT OFFICE NEEDS ANYTHING FROM US THAT CAN'T BE TAKEN CARE OF IN ONE DAY, IT MUST REFUND OUR TAXES, OR IF NECESSARY SIMPLY DEFUND ITS OWN BUDGET, TO MAKE SURE THAT WE RECEIVE US$100 FOR EVERY ADDITIONAL DAY THAT OFFICE'S FUNCTIONS OCCUPY OUR TIME.

We need a law to that effect. Low-level government officials tend to seek a sort of emotional relief from the stress of dealing with their co-workers by hiding in uselessness and demanding that the taxpayers use up more time to talk to other people. Very well, let them have it, if they have been trained properly: Any suggestion that a taxpayer who has already taken the time to talk to them might spare even more time to talk to anyone else begins with the payment of a fine from the employee to the taxpayer, on the spot, in cash. First the $100 bill, then the whine about something needing to be done using any other minute than the one in which the employee is speaking.

The thing every government employee should be trained to fear most is that a taxpayer might, Heaven forbid and fend, make another phone call or go to another office or even think about whatever transaction is taking place, today, after today...the obligatory result of which will be that the first government employee is fined and, in normal circumstances, fired! I think that may be the most valuable reform that can be made in the direction of making our government more cost-effective. It would eliminate unproductive employees from government offices without even using up pink paper, much less requiring supervisors to make studies of which employees most need to be dismissed.

Only legislation will have this effect, though. Several people have already documented what happens when an honest, ethical person takes a job in an office infested with time-wasters and pledges not to waste the taxpayers' time. What happens is that the time-wasters actively hate that person and show their hate by becoming even more useless than they have been, until, since the system makes it hard for all the time-wasters to be thrown out of the office, the head of the office caves in and gets rid of the efficient worker because that person "was not good for morale."

The appointment system has advantages--for years the D.M.V. was chronically full of impatient people, all breathing one another's germs and building up hostility--and I didn't want to discourage that. In order to avoid wasting taxpayers' time government offices must, however, correct the appointment systems they've been trying to set up by keeping all identifying information about people out of electronic devices. Instead of collecting people's names, the appointment setter should give each taxpayer a password, which can be printed off a computer, written down after a telephone call, or mailed out with requests for forms and fees. "You may use the D.M.V.'s 'secure' computers to set up an appointment," I said, "but the real name of any living person is just too valuable to the enemies of this country ever to be transferred through the Internet. That won't happen."

I was considering my alternatives here. Virginia being a relatively literate and affluent State, we do not have the problems some inland States are reporting with people having drivers' licenses, voter registration cards, and similar identifying documents. Many people keep such things in their cars or in their trench coat pockets. This made it much easier for those who wanted photographic identification for each voter to get legislation to that effect, which reportedly some States still don't have. Virginians are typically proud of our identities--dangerously so, in this Information Age--and happy to whip out proof that we are the Tracy Lee Doe of "Doe Hill" every time we drive a car, use a bank or bank document or credit card, fill a prescription, sign a contract, take a class, or vote. I've had neighbors who wanted to offer me a lift show me their drivers' licenses just so they would feel Properly Introduced. And even though I've also had drivers' licenses printed out with incorrect information on them, so I know that drivers' licenses are not actually proof that someone's not an enemy spy, and think respect for privacy should outweigh concern about illegal voting...in real life I'm as proud of my identity as anyone else is.

But, as a mature, stable, frugal adult, do I actually need a current driver's license? I don't drive, except in emergencies. I seldom pay other people to handle money for me, and when I do it's the post office, which handles cash and therefore has a system as secure and reliable as cash; I don't need proof of identity for banking purposes. I don't travel and don't plan to sign any contracts to pay anything over time. I'll be greatly surprised if the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security still exists when I'm seventy; I certainly don't expect to depend on the small share of a small income I've paid into it. I don't use prescription drugs. I've been looking forward to taking some of the classes many colleges offer free or cheap to older people, but I have lived all these years without the benefit of those courses. I used routinely to fill out I-9 forms on jobs, but the corporations that use those forms don't hire people over age 50. Although I receive mail through a post office box, some companies insist on adding names and home addresses to their correspondence, so if I ever needed to prove it, as it might be for claiming  a share of whatever may remain of the McFilthy oil money, I could still prove that I am the Whoever of Wherever I am in real life. All I'd have any real trouble doing, without official state identification, would be voting. I think voting is a valuable civil right everyone should exercise, but plenty of people don't vote, and they seem to lead reasonably satisfactory lives in their lazy, irresponsible, public-spirit-challenged way.

I could be sufficiently provoked just to stop paying the D.M.V. a few dollars every few years. Anyone looking at the last picture they snapped of me would probably agree that that picture, alone, was sufficient provocation to withhold money from them forevermore. I do think it's everyone's public duty to oppose the pernicious idea of using individual identity rather than cash to pay for things, which puts any country where people are stupid enough to do it one step away from The Handmaid's Tale, and the case might be made that just having a state-issued identification document is supporting that very, very bad idea.

Anyway, the employee near the door went into a back office and get a superordinate employee to set up an appointment using the D.M.V.'s very own computer. Seeing three people who could stand witness enter the office, I made sure those people could see that the envelope the employee took contained the form, and the cash, the employee needed to process right then and there.

In literally less than two minutes, out popped the superordinate employee. This was a young woman whose long black hair and drapey black veil made an especially effective combination. If she were found to be the source of the idiocy operating at the D.M.V. this morning, she could probably earn a fair living, whether she has any sense of rhythm or not, just showing up at parties impersonating an Arab dancer. Or a native of several other countries that have recently been at war with ours. Not that people like her and me are necessarily always going to be at higher risk than people with paler hair or darker skin or folded eyelids, but currently, though the young woman might not have travelled enough to realize it, our identities happen to be especially valuable to evildoers.

Had she simply filed the form and the money? She had not. She had brought back an official printed form authorizing the bearer to bring the same form and the same money back in October.

I might have made that up in science fiction (I think there was something like it in a movie called Brazil) but I was surprised to see it, in real life, in a country that's still classified as a democracy. I had to wonder whether, in an election year, in a State that's legislated that drivers' licenses be used to identify voters, someone was hoping to discourage as many people as possible from voting.

Anyone up for election this November needs to stop pouring money into silly, low-content campaign advertisements and break out a serious plan for restoring common sense to the D.M.V. Which should include making it impossible for the identity information the D.M.V. has traditionally been allowed to store, in filing cabinets, to be transferred to the D.M.V. via the Internet. Instead of trying to encourage people to type D.M.V. information into computers and transmit it electronically, the new D.M.V. must begin with a recognition that computers with modems are not secure and never will be...so, rather than encouraging people recklessly to link their computers to "our secure web site" and hand their driver's license data directly to evildoers, the D.M.V. should stick to the traditional system whereby people fill out paper forms at the local D.M.V. office and hand them directly to employees. The web site could be used to process requests for exemptions, which could allow D.M.V. employees to visit locations where they could fill out paper forms on behalf of people with disabilities.