Fun fact, if you're unlucky enough to replace your Social Security card 10 times, they will no longer issue them to you anymore. It is a lifetime limit, and they fan it out to 3 per year.

Oddly enough, if you legally change your name, they will send you a new one regardless of the limit.

I tend towards being cautious with my information which has led to beauricracies doubting my existence.

I got my first passport at a formative period of my life (international travel does that). I looked nothing like the photo within aa year. It served as a passport until it expired but only created skeptisism as a photo ID.

I don't know how to drive, so do not possess a driver's licence. I am in a 35+ year relationship, but unmarried.

The only purchase I have made on finance was a bed that I immediately paid off because the the only reason I did it was to establish a record. This was surprisingly difficult to do because they were reluctant to let me have the bed on finance because I had no credit record.

I finally had to renew my passport when I bought a house. It was the only way I could meet the id requirements.

Prior to that I was leveraging non-photo id that could only be acquired with photo-id. It seen that will be accepted in lieu in many instances and allows you to get more similar forms of non-photo ID. All you need to get started is to find a staff member fed up with the ridiculous rules enough to click the checkbox to say that they saw a photo ID. It helps that many of the staff in these positions are more aware of security theater than the general public.

Being a land owner means a lot of those days are peassed, I can't really prove I am the person who is recorded as owning the land, but mostly organisatipns are happy that I am claiming to be someone they know exists.

Linkedin has stopped asking. I'm not sure if that means they think I am a lost cause or that anyone not on their books by now doesn't actually exist.

Yeah it's actually not that bad, because for example the BMV will likely upon request send you a duplicate driver's license to your address of record. Same for getting replacement credit cards. If you had utility services at that address in your name that's additional documentation. Also historical tax returns, bank accounts, etc.

    - get insurance to cover you for X
    - get hit by X
    - realise you actually got hit by Y after reading the policy small print (or you really did get hit by X, but your policy only covers you for Y)

It depends on the country. The US has the ability to do the equivalent of deep "duck typing" with almost no documentation even if you've been off the grid in the developing world for a long time. This is a case where the intelligence apparatus works in your favor. They can know you are a US citizen with high probability absent obvious evidence of such.

Of course, if you fall into a crack that is beyond their reach you will almost certainly have a more difficult time. For a variety of historical reasons, there has been relatively little reliable documentation of American citizenship so the system adapted to that reality.

In my country (and I think by now most non-US developed countries do something similar) everybody has a CPR(CentralPersonRegistry) number that identifies you, you need it to do almost everything so you aren't likely to forget (its your birthday + 4 digits). You get it at birth or if you come to the country for more than 3 months, it legally mandatory and it's also legally required to inform the government if you change your address. Also, if you (ever) had a modern passport there is already a database with your fingerprints, face and iris scan in it.

If you're married and Jewish, the wife's mother keeps the marriage document, so even if there is a house fire and all documents are lost, your mother in law usually lives in another house, so you can pick it up from there.

At least you can restore it. Imagine all your devices are lost in a massive fire, is there a way to get back your apple account?

Sort of the plot of Banana Joe.

Everytime I get stuck with some kind of circular bureaucracy I shout "it's Banana Joe all over again!" and no one understands.

Do the people who sign sworn affidavits already have to have proven identities? If so, then they're unable to recover from a situation where they lost everyone's identity.