Last I checked there is an identity management authentication system you can use, for example Twitter has verified accounts (I don't know how they do it, perhaps by mail) or Bluehost asks for people to fax them a copy of an ID/Passport to get shell access (stupid, considering they have your VISA).
So what you are saying is you are prepared to take the potential abuses because you want it to be more "seamless" than a fax, postcard or a $1 VISA charge. And that further these abuses are better than having a market solution where a commercial ID provider or bank does it themselves?
Sounds like f--- all gain for a lot of risk. And we all know that beyond the abuses the "voluntary" nature of this will swiftly decline after it's implemented, so don't try to argue in that direction either. Just a reminder: the US government is currently illegally sifting through people's email, has wars going which are not authorized by congress, still runs a number of secret prisons across the world in which torture is conducted, is seeking people's private twitter messages in addition to their email because they have contact with Wikileaks, is groping people's genitals with high-school drop-outs in airports as well as taking naked photographs of them and has a "Homeland" tsar who is going to appear on telescreens installed in Walmarts to tell people to be alarmed and suspicous. Further, opposition movements have heated up the rhetoric of your politics to the point where there are open calls for the assassination of Julian Assange (who, like or dislike, is doing journalism) and the domestic rhetoric has been such that mentally ill people are now gunning down politicians. And you think it's advisable we install an ID system on the Internet because, in some unspecified way, it would be easier than a $1 VISA charge or a fax.... You sir, are very shill-like.
