So yesterday I got a message from a reader, reproduced below with permission and names changed to protect the innocent and others:
[crazy old guy in the desert],
I was referred to your website by [Third Assistant Demigoddess of Freedom]. I’m trying to keep my children out of the social security system. My latest hurdle is the [state] DMV and their request for an SS Number for them to process a driver learner’s permit application.
I would like to talk through the issue with you and perhaps others who may be able to offer some advice on how to handle this situation.
I already went to SS for a waiver letter which I received and presented to the DMV. They would not accept it. I asked them what they needed for me to get from SS that they would accept and they told me to contact the [state] DMV’s Legal Dept. I am in the process of doing that.
Please let me know if we can converse on this topic.
[name]
And I had to confess that I really don’t have any useful input to offer. In the past decade even I have occasionally been forced to write a certain number on a form, generally in the interest of getting paid. If a person in my situation can’t completely separate himself from The Number, I don’t know that it can be done.
However I have a particular handicap in this regard, illustrated by the writer’s willingness to deal with government legal departments. He’s not trying to fly under the radar particularly, he just wants to avoid the necessity of his children getting a Number. And maybe if you’re not allergic to jumping through hoops it’s possible to do so. I don’t know.
But there’s a lot of aggregate experience among TUAK readers, and maybe some of it is relevant to this writer’s problem. So I’m opening the floor to suggestions.
I think some of the annabaptists manage to stay out of the ponzi scheme. There are also some of them who do drive cars. That might be an avenue to explore.
Completely silly and OT
apparently there is a guy locally who goes around in springtime looking for shed snake skins, to assess how many snakes there are. We only have one little native viper in Britain.
Does anyone have a source of shed rattler skins?
}:-)>
In nine years wandering around rattler country, I’ve never seen a single shed skin.
The only whole snake skins I’ve ever seen were those I took off the snake I’d just killed. Only kill big, poisonous snakes that won’t stay away from the yard. Let’s see, that would be three of them in the last fifty years. I’ve seen a few dried up old partial shed skins in that time, but there wasn’t enough left to be worth anything. Found a very large black snake in my orchard once, and he chased me out! Amazing the size they can get to. Never saw him again, however.
Maybe he needs a new hobby? LOL
I avoid using that number as much as possible, but sometimes have to write it down to make people happy.
Perhaps viewing the number as I do will help others not worry so much about it. It’s not “my” number, it’s the government’s number. And they order me to use it, “or else”. So, when asked for “my” number, as I rummage around looking to find where I saved it in my phone (I won’t memorize it), I point that fact out. It is a number; it isn’t “my number”. If all it accomplishes is making me feel better, that’s sometimes enough. I have had places refuse service to me on that account. A good trade to my way of seeing it.
Lest we forget, the use of “that” number was once far more ubiquitous than it is today. It was once printed on each one of my payroll stubs. In college, it went on every paper we turned in to a professor. It was on our report cards. On the outside of our book covers, we often wrote it in big numerals right under our name!
It was once written on virtually every bit of paper I got from any insurance company.
I could continue here, but you get the point. We actually use “that” number today far less than we did (say) thirty years ago. But there is still a long way to go. I believe medical records are still largely indexed by SSN, meaning their privacy is actually illusionary at best.
I prefer the term ‘State Slave Number’.
Lets folks know exactly where I stand on the matter…
This is something that is going to vary by state —
Although almost all of the states are now compliant with federal “Real-ID”, there are a few states where they’ve weighed the costs of illegal aliens driving without-license-or-insurance against the costs of letting them have licenses — and decided to make special “not valid as federal ID” licenses.
Some of those states pretty much make you prove that you were born outside the US to foreign parents, others just want to know that you’ve been resident for a year or two from school transcripts or whatever.
The latest edition of the JJ Luna book “How To Be Invisible” is a good resource for minimizing one’s interaction with “the system” while not being a hermit.
I think it is 3 of 50 states that aren’t real-id compliant, and 10 of 50 that have some sort of license for the documentationally-challenged.
Maybe they ought to do like a certain Black Kenyan Muslim did, and simply take the SSN of a long-dead Connecticut resident. Seems to work rather well for him…
“I believe medical records are still largely indexed by SSN, meaning their privacy is actually illusionary at best.”
Not Kaiser – they have their own numbering system for the index. Says so right on my card. Not to say they don’t know the slave number as well, but they don’t index their database with it.