The Day At The DMV

My driving license had expired so I was forced to head down to the local motor vehicle office to get it renewed. The state offers a “service” for renewing by mail, but this requires getting a separate eye exam, filling out some forms and hoping that the postal service does its job. Having had my state tax returns lost the last two years, my confidence in that link in the chain is not very high, so I elected to do it the old fashioned way. That meant standing in lines and dealing with surly functionaries of the state.

When you enter the place, you are “greeted” by a functionary that asks you for the purpose of your visit. You are then assigned a number or directed to a kiosk. More on that in a bit. The numbers are assigned in a way that almost seems random. The person in front of me got “G23” and I was given “B80.” The idea is to make sure no one waiting truly knows who is next in the queue. Maybe they had riots in the past or perhaps people sold their place in line. Maybe there is no reason for it.

The office near me is not in the ghetto, but serves the ghetto so that means lots of vibrancy in the waiting area. One of the first things I noticed was that many of the people there were trying to pay off violations, mostly parking tickets. The angry greeter at the front desk barked at those people to get in the line for the “self-service” kiosks against the wall. He had that look of a man irritated that these people had interrupted his work, even though his work was to greet people entering the facility.

Of course, these kiosks could be located all over the malls and shopping centers around the state so people could do this task anywhere and at any time. For that matter, this could be a phone app, but that’s not how the government works. The kiosks are not for your convenience. They exist for the convenience of the government workers. In all probability they were sold to the state as a way to make life easier for the clerks, who had to haggle with citizens over unpaid fines. Given the color of the place, it is not irrational.

Of course, the lines for those machines were long as most of the machines were out of order. Then you have the fact that the diverse community is not very good at following instructions. You see this in fast food joints where they struggle to order from the menu. A system that requires someone to select from a menu of options, with no modifications, is never going to do well in the diverse community. The result is a struggle of diverse man versus machine, with outbursts and demands for service from the staff.

I spotted a Muslim women in a trash bag shuffling up to one of the counters. Two swarthy men were hovering around her. They guarded her virtue as she exposed her head for the license photo. From what I saw, they have no fears of rival males carrying her off. Everyone in the place was intently watching the scene, even the surly functionaries. For a minute, all of us were plugged into the collective consciousness, wondering why our rulers are doing this to us.

This is an example of why open borders will end in disaster. In a world without government, people will sort themselves out, one way or another. In the custodial state, everyone is dealing with the state. That means the interface has to accommodate all comers. In a world where the picture ID is critical, a people who think photos steal their soul or make Allah angry with their women is doomed to failure. The DMV can handle Mexican fruit pickers, it cannot adapt to Bronze Age barbarians.

The funny thing about the diverse community is they will sit forever, waiting for government service. Honkies get impatient with lines and expect the government to work like the private sector. The diverse are much more reasonable in this regard. Everyone had head phones so they could listen to their music while they stared at their phones, doing whatever it is they do on their phones. They came prepared to entertain themselves for the day. Maybe it is from habit or maybe it is from nature. Regardless, these are not people who will be voting libertarian.

That’s the other thing you see in a government office. Libertarianism works fine as long as your society is composed of high IQ sociopaths, who can manage on their own. Once you have people like those working for the state, and getting services from the state, libertarianism collapses. The people in the waiting area not only need rules, they need help following the rules. That’s not going to happen through voluntary association. Unless you have genocide in your heart, libertarianism cannot survive outside the lab.

The other interesting thing is that the motor vehicle office no longer issues a license. It is mailed to you. I did a little sleuthing and discovered that the selling of ID’s was a problem. No one admits it, but the rules they have in place now are clearly aimed at preventing insiders from selling your information. Allegedly, they now account for each blank that is used for a license. By mailing it, they insure the person applying for the license is at the location they claim.

This will not work so the next step will be bio-metric ID’s where you provide a thumbprint or some other biologically unique credential. All of our credentials will eventually be multi-factor authentication. That means you will present the physical ID, some sort of randomized PIN that is linked to the ID and a password. Secure facilities do this for system access. Adding a thumbprint or DNA sample is the logical next step once the costs are low enough to make it practical.

That also means all of us will be in the government database. Our medical records, credit history, internet pornography interests, will all be tied to our official government issued citizen ID. It’s not unreasonable to think that people will have a chip implanted at birth that links to the ID and other items that require authentication for access. It’s not happening tomorrow, but you can see where it is headed when you look at things like Real ID. Like a fungus, this is slowly growing on us and will one day feel like a normal part of life.

Of course, it will still require us to stand in line to get our license renewed.

80 thoughts on “The Day At The DMV

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  2. I’m a small-l libertarian. I believe tat there is a role for gov’t in our lives, but it needs to be a LOT smaller.

    That said, my voter registration is big-L Libertarian, for a good reason. My mailbox has a LOT more room in it for vacation deals and pizza coupons, because it’s not filled with appeals for cash from either Rs or Ds and their respective minions nd hangers-on.

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  4. “Libertarianism works fine as long as your society is composed of high IQ sociopaths”

    qotFd. God, I wish I had wrote that.

  5. Re: G23 and B80.
    At the risk of appearing too serious, the different numbering is likely just categorizing people according to why they’re at the DMV. E.g., renewing a vehicle registration, obtaining a CDL, trying to title a used vehicle bought with no title, etc. That way, on the wait-list you’re only behind people who have a similar reason for being there.
    I presume that had you not allowed the license to expire you might have renewed it without having to be personally present? What lesson do we learn from that, eh? 🙂

  6. The comments about the diverse people is spot on. Long ago, I had a job at a quasi-government office, in Indiana. Most of the people we served were diverse. Being subject to government regulations, we had to get social security and driver’s license numbers from our clients. The diverse people never questioned the request for their SS of DL #. The occasional non-diverse person would get upset about the request for their SS and DL #. “What do you need that for? Why do you want it?” etc. It wasn’t long before I concluded the diverse people were so used to dealing with government programs which asked for personal information that they simply accepted it was routine. I found that to be very sad.

  7. Sounds exactly like the Massachusetts DMV experience. That is not a happy thought. I can honestly say that I’ve never (successfully) been helped by a Negro DMV clerk. I used to try, but I finally figured out that they really, really hate Whites and will go out of their way to not help them. So I go to the rural or suburban offices and if the ‘Take a Ticket’ lottery results in a window with a black face then I tear the ticket up and try again.
    I had to take my aunt to the DMV to attempt to get a MA Senior ID. The poor lady had never driven but the new Federal rules on Photo ID were forcing her to get an ID. Eighty years old, brain injury survivor, very sweet person but no drivers license, or modern work experience. The black bitch we got at the window demanded a drivers license or ‘recent high school or college ID’. I had looked up the registry rules and it said that if I could identify myself and was willing to vouch for for her, she could get an ID. That hag wasn’t having any of it and was enjoying herself.

    Negros in this country didn’t used to behave that way. So, yeah. I love all the ‘Racial Healing’ of the late Obama era.

    • No, it references the Mark of the Beast “666” in the Book of Revelation (last book of the New Testament). Not RevelationS. Sorry to nitpick on that but people always make that mistake.

      • Yeah, I always get that wrong. I always consider it, then decide, well, he had more than one revelation, so it should be plural.

        But you’re correct. It is nitpicking.

  8. So they are still doing that “civil servant shuffle” I think Tim Conway learned it watching DMV tyoes

  9. I was at a Midwestern Social Security office today and there was no shortage of Muslims getting their golden ticket.Obama’s revenge.

  10. I took my son with me to the DMV last week to get our license plates for the new car. Like all government buildings, they specialize in shades of gray for all of the Facili-tech furniture, carpet, wall colors, etc. What was odd, but humorous, was the use of large mirror-walls around 180 degrees of the large room. You know, like at a strip bar. It was very odd, and gave the facility the impression of being 3x larger (with 3x the number of people!).

    We took number B174, and I felt like Beetlejuice at the end of the movie because the counter for “B” was at B121. There were also separate counters for A, C, and a few other letters. Presumably this delineates between people who need plates, and people who need a new drivers license. So, the automated “Now serving ____” moved very slowly.

    90 minutes later…….we had our plates…..but not until being reminded that I had only paid the “sales taxes” on the vehicle, not the “permission to drive it on Colorado roads” annual use tax. Always fun to fork over another $1,000 for that. At least next year it’ll only be $987…it goes down slowly each year.

    So my son asks why he was there, and I told him point-blank, “Because I wanted to show you how hopeless and demoralizing the Government truly is. This kind of thing is EVERYWHERE in Government. The DMV is just one of the few places where they can’t hide it behind guarded facilities with badge entry.”

    I think it’s important to introduce children to The Government at a very young age. When you’re 13, ninety minutes is like 42 hours. Everything is more intense when you’re young. That’s a memory he will have for a very long time.

    • Careful there. Talk like that about one of your young’uns could get you into some sort of situation with dem der gummint types, if you know what I mean.

    • Re: “This kind of thing is EVERYWHERE in Government. The DMV is just one of the few places where they can’t hide it behind guarded facilities with badge entry.”

      I left the dreaded private sector a few months ago to work for a DoD civilian agency and your words encapsulate the work here. It took me over a week to get “full” computer/network access, and that was only because I was proactive and bugged people incessantly about it. I won’t delve too fare into the details, but the DoD cyber/IT people (you know, the one’s who are keeping you safe from cyber threats) did not set up the LAN for my desk correctly. I had to go through 7 or 8 people before a competent IT person realized that the local IT people were lazy and never networked my cubicle/computer correctly… On top of that, I finished all of my [mostly useless] pre-work training a few weeks ago and have been asking for assignments but have yet to be assigned anything despite, again, constantly asking, so I just go to work and take extra computer-based training. In a 38 hour work week (government workers get 2 hours/week to go the gym*) I observe that most people only “work” 20 hours, the rest is spent socializing. When I shadow another coworker, usually 25% of that 25 hours is spent correcting another DoD civilian’s slipshod work. I always get a chuckle when a conventionally attractive young woman (blond hair, etc.) literally spends her entire day on the phone gabbing with her friends, Mom, walking around talking to people, etc.

      In any event, you need a badge to enter my nondescript and unmarked office, so the general public is unable to view the lack of productivity.

      P.S. There is a lot of “diversity” here.For some of my off-site OJT, if you are a white male, you get one shot to pass to course or admin actions will follow. If you are a diversity hire you get 2 or three opportunities to “pass.”

  11. ” . . . internet pornography interests, . . . ”

    The wife has warned me about going to Fender Guitar’s website, then to Guitar Center’s.

    Driver’s licenses are renewed at my local tax collector’s office, along with registration and tag actions. In contravention of the usual tales, the employees are courteous, helpful, even downright friendly. There is always some delay but usually because people don’t have the right papers, not because the staff is intentionally slow. Yes, I know, hard to believe but true. The county building inspector office is the same way, pleasant people to deal with who will not give you the runaround.

    Two years ago I had to renew my license. I didn’t realize I needed more ID than just the license. I went home to get what I needed. 10 minutes later when I got back, the lady I was talking to finished with the customer she had, then waved me back to her window. She didn’t make me start with a new number. Couldn’t ask for better service.

  12. Ahhh, grocery shopping. My wife and I go in the morning. I call it “shopping with the white people” . In and out in no time, no having to hear arguments about why the EBT card didn’t work. Etc, etc. if you go in the afternoon be ready.

  13. One of my favorites was taking my then 11 year old to the Post Office to get his passport pictures taken and application filed. (yes, in the nice zip codes they do that). A nice young black postal employee went to take his picture, stopped, and told him to stop “chinking” his eyes up. He was puzzled. She said “You know slanting your eyes up like a Chink” and put the camera down to pull the outer edges of her eyes back. He finally figured it out. When he smiled a little, his eyes “Chink” . Interesting discussion on the ride back home.

  14. Pingback: My Day At The DMV | IowaDawg's Very Own Blawg

  15. “the diverse community is not very good at following instructions. You see this in fast food joints where they struggle to order from the menu.”

    Blacks and Latinos are the worst at fast food places, but there are few things that I dread more than getting behind a white prole who’s buying even a single item at, say, a drug store. Half the time they’re mumbling to the cashier, discussing the price of what they’re buying, inquiring about the cost of something behind the counter that they have no intention of purchasing, and when it comes time to pay they’re always using cash, which they count slowly, and then when the purchase is complete, they scrutinize the receipt, and much of the time they question something on it and stand there for another minute or two. What’s more is that these people are rarely friendly. It wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if the person holding me up were simply polite to the cashier. I’m talking about city dwelling proles, by the way. Proles who live in flyover country don’t seem to have this problem.

    Blacks, Latinos, and white proles have an enormous sense of entitlement in public places, at least in cities. If they’re spending a single dollar somewhere, they feel like they own the place and they let everyone know it.

  16. The last time I renewed my drivers license was in 1990. By 1994 Bill Clinton had enacted the reforms that made it mandatory to supply your Social Security Number, which was something I refuse to do. I don’t want to make it any easier for the hundreds of State and Federal databases to amass data about me and correlate it easily. I prefer to not be tracked in everything I do.
    I drove for another 15 years, sans license, and for a few years sans insurance. When my last car was on its deathbed I dumped it, and have been walking ever since.
    At this point, the only ID I have is an expired passport from 12 years ago; I doubt I would be able to get documentation to get a new license; being off grid for so long makes any attempt to get back on look suspicious. The Freedoms that used to constitute America are gone.
    I miss the freedom of having a car, not being able to just get in it and drive somewhere, anywhere, just for the hell of it. Self-driving cars are being touted as a replacement, and I know many people who lost licenses because of DWI will welcome them, but nobody will use them spontaneously for fun (or for Freedom), they will only be used as commuting vehicles, and they will be tracked as carefully as any rancher tracks his cows. Peasants are the new cows. Our freedoms have been eroded, and drivers licenses were the first nail in that coffin.
    Your minor quibbles about the type of customers inhabiting DMV offices is misdirection; you’re all missing the bigger picture, that of extreme overwhelming centralized control of people, and the harm it does to everyone. Don’t belittle the people at DMV, they’re just cows, trying to get by before the slaughter.

    • Mr Bidnez: Don’t fool yourself, many stockgrowers despise the stock tracking, which is solely for the benefit of the packer interests, pharma and the usual blossoming gubmint. Premise ID, the same.
      FYI, the DMV employees would have been loaded on a pot and trucked off LONG ago for cutter and canner prices……. as in culling to a distant sale barn where hopefully, no one knows who you are.
      Soapweed

  17. I take it that Z lives on the East coast…In AZ, your license expires at age 65, and then renewed 5 years at a time after that. The process is fast, the people competent. A libertarian got elected Secretary of State a while back….
    In my former State of Illinois you could avoid most of these problems by going in after lunch late in the week, whereas Monday was a nightmare. but Illinois was still not half as bad as what was described in this post.

  18. In California, they put you through all the checks and verifications, but freely allow illegal aliens to sign up.

    I deal with the local DMV more than I would like to for car titles and registrations. I find that the clerks have a lot of leeway on registration fees on older cars. I am friendly and make them laugh, ask them some questions about their day, and they proudly come back to me with how much they could have charged me, and how little they are actually charging. It takes forever, that “greeter” is typically the daunting part of the exercise, and the G47, B22 ticket thing has never been understandable, given that I often need to wait a long time and sometimes use the time to try and devine the logic of the number assignments. But the overall experience is a great reminder of why you don’t want the government running anything that matters.

    • I’m skeptical, to tell the truth. I’m always skeptical when a theory is applied outside its intended use. Explaining why rats have lots of offspring compared to elephants is useful in the narrow scope of mammals. It is going to fall apart when applying it to politics. The model of Left and Right has only been with us for a short time and it is breaking down. That mean r/K can only explain the world in the narrow space between the advent of universal suffrage and now. That violates some basic laws of evolutionary theory.

      • No, it validates it.
        Evolution is fluid and opportunistic- conditions change, thus various strategems become more or less successful. Further changing the conditions…

  19. http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire/print
    ”Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph 8) is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.”
    To the vast majority of Africans IN America, a government job is merely the Ultra Super Deluxe welfare package.

    • The Derb’s “Talk” is great! I had thought of “The DMV Lady” too, but you beat me by 11 minutes, 22 seconds to finding that quote at Taki. It’s an outstanding excerpt.

    • In the US, airplane pilots licenses last forever, but you must get a medical certificate every few years.
      you already proven you know how to fly, you only need to have a doctor sign off on your health to do so.

      • You have to keep renewing a driver’s license because almost no one knows how to drive. Operate the vehicle, reasonably well, although not in an emergency, but actually drive in a thoughtful and aware manner, no.

    • DMV, being a gov’t entity employs “diversity” at higher rates than neighborhood demographics would indicate. Mine is in a well-off, very liberal area of NJ* (literally, you have to visit local Target or Walmart to see any blacks), but all people who staffed that particular DMV were large black females. One, who was renewing my license, had a huge tattoo, on her impressively ample cleavage. I am absolutely sure, she’d have been asked to cover up a bit had she worked in private sector. *the more liberal the place, the less “diverse” it is. We have a huge number of Indians and Chinese, but blacks are kept in Trenton and Mexicans in Hightstown.

  20. On my last trip to the DMV, in the line ahead of me was a twenty-something female with a long weave, presumably an Obama voter. She wore a top with bare midriff and lower back. On her lower back, impossible to ignore, was a giant tattoo of a stylized dollar sign ($), with an arrow below it pointing to the machinery she presumably uses for gainful employment, if you get my drift.

    • Weird coincidence. Yesterday, I saw a young woman, also w/ an elaborate weave hairdo that dangled down her back, who seemed to be wearing a very skimpy bathing suit top, with criss-cross straps across her back and visible skin/midriff. I was in the grocery store. She was on the other side of the store so I couldn’t just walk up to look at her. She was wearing shorts, too, but . . . a bathing suit in the middle of January in Middle TN? Too far away to see if there were any tattoos. 98% of blacks can’t swim, and they avoid additional tanning, so I’m not sure what the bathing suit was all about. It was about 45 F outside. So strange.

  21. Just went through it, and by the sound of your experience, you either live in Massachusetts or your state is a clone of Mass. process. Less than half of the people getting served spoke English.

  22. Z Man;
    I share your skepticism about Libertarianism, particular their loopy idea about spontaneous order arising. I guess they think the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (i.e. the spontaneous tendency towards disorder) is overcome by good intentions – or something.

    But they are right about one thing, namely that IF the government were small and limited this sort of thing would have no reason to exist. However, such a government could only be possible in a high trust society, which in turn requires a transcendent moral order that everybody more or less agrees with. Yet they are proud atheists. Hence the futility of Libertarianism: They presume on God’s order while denying Him the least credit for its existence, where found.

    • I certainly have a libertarian streak to my conservatism. It’s not that I think these people will properly order themselves in a truly free society. But they would become more useful and motivated if food and shelter where actually at risk with idleness and bad decisions. I frankly don’t care what they do, as long as I’m not paying the bill.

    • Libertarians are on firm ground when they talk about economics. Free markets are better than alternatives. The trouble is people are not moist robots. Humans are willing to accept inefficiencies in markets in exchange for non-tangible benefits.

      Libertarians also make the same mistake as liberals with regards to the chain of causality. They think it is Economics -> Politics -> Culture, but in reality it is Biology -> Culture -> Politics -> Economics. It’s why imposing Western institutions on Africa failed. The people and their culture were not built for Western politics.

      • It was not libertarians that have imposed western institutions on Africa. Libertarians have always opposed foreign aid schemes along with nation building and other globalist machinations.

        • That’s not the point. The point is libertarianism, at least the current manifestation of it, gets the chain of causality wrong. Remove the state from Detroit and you are not getting the libertarian paradise you imagine. You get Lagos, if you are lucky.

          • “District-9”
            LOL! Great movie!
            Highly recommended.
            At first I thought it was a satire/parody/comedy. Full of cringeworthy leftist sentiments which you’re supposed to agree with.
            come to think of it, it is a satire.. too bad the producer/director/actors didn’t know that

          • i recommend you read interviews with the director. the movie is anything but a lefty themed story. it’s not a parody either; it’s an allegory 🙂

      • Z Man;
        FWIW, I agree about Libertarians and economics. Don’t get me wrong, I’d LIKE to be a Libertarian because I find it intellectually appealing as a man of Western Civilization, but, as you say, their frame doesn’t comport with observable reality. Plus, there are actually feedback loops in the chains of causality you outline and it is hard to see how they can operate in the Libertarian chain without the existence of a Platonic Guardian to reset the economics.

        OTOH, in the chain of causation you outline, given that cultures compete and are plastic, it’s pretty easy to posit how feedback works, even among cultures at peace. I.e. Economic Distress -> Political Change -> Cultural Change (as in where we are right now in the good old USA).

        In the case of cultures at endemic low level warfare (mankind’s state for almost all of its history) the feedback is even more up close and personal, all the way up to biology. For example, Economic Competition over Scarce Resources -> Bad Political Choices -> Biological Casualties -> Culture Change. etc. Or Good PoliticoMilitary Choices -> More Economic Resources -> More Biology (Population). Wow, just like The Sims_! I’m not meaning this as a put-down; The Sims was structured to accurately model how known historical processes operate, after all. So, that the game and those like it ‘work’ is some confirming evidence via analogy.

      • Precisely. Call or write your Congress-critter, if you can reach them. They have good defenses for avoiding their constituents.

    • Actually, high trust society depends on one thing: white people.

      It’s a demographic mutation, just as barred owls and spotted owls are both owls.

      How to work around this?

      • P.S.- I see culture, such as Christianity, as much as a symptom than a cause.
        I think I’m a bit wrong in that, too.

  23. “Honkies get impatient…”

    Because we are paying for that circus. People waiting for free stuff are much more patient.

  24. Yes, DMV offices are a fascinating study as virtually all citizens must cycle through them. Grocery stores are another great place to sample society.

      • It is not libertarianism that, in your own words, “forced [you] to head down to the local motor vehicle office to get [your permission slip] renewed.”

        Progressives and their captive slaves are much more apt to be sociopaths than individuals who adhere to the NAP and who actually make and produce or serve upon a voluntary and consensual basis.

        OTOH, I tend to agree with you that the “clientele” you encountered at the DMV are not particularly well suited for liberty.

        • They aren’t suited for liberty, but that doesn’t mean that we either enslave them or put them in cradles and nurse them like babies. We can leave them alone.

          • Which is what Frederic Douglass advocated 150 years ago:

            ” Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us… If the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall… All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone… Just let him alone… Your interference is doing him positive injury… Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you… the fault will not be yours, it will be his… Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live.”

        • Easy now. Zman loves to thump us poor, utopian libertarians about the head and shoulders. It’s quite fun, actually!

          If criminals didn’t run the world, there would be no Order to our Liberty! Right?

        • Dude, you’re a dinosaur, spell it D I N O S A U R. The only libertarian state you have any chance at all of establishing is the state of chaos. That is actually achievable, and even probable.

      • I always try to go to the grocery store when I’m in another part of the country, or in a foreign land. Always entertaining.

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