I felt so bad for the man at the next window.
He’d arrived just after I had, in line that morning. I got there at 6:56 a.m., two hours and four minutes before the place opened. I was sixth or so in line, we entered the building at nearly the same time. This was his fourth time coming to the DMV for this issue, I heard him say; I didn’t know his specific goal, but it involved a title or registration change, and he was growing desperate. The name and address he had entered for the lienholder on his paperwork was different than the one on the original title, and the DMV couldn’t process his paperwork. The name and address were different, the man kept saying, because the original bank had been bought by another bank, and no longer existed.
The DMV person said he’d have to produce proof of that. The man seemed at a loss. How was he supposed to prove that a bank had bought another bank? The DMV person wasn’t sure.
I was so busy feeling bad for this guy that I didn’t see the bureaucratic nightmare that was about to befall my own self, threatening to extinguish my will to live: Someone else had accidentally entered some information on a line that they were not supposed to on my paperwork. The DMV decided this mistake someone else made meant I was lying about how I got my car. I wasn’t lying: The car used to be owned by my brother, then my dad, and now it was mine.
They suspiciously asked me if the person I claimed was my father—whose not-all-that-common last name I bear—was really my father. They quizzed me on his name. They asked me if he owned a car dealership. No, why? Well, there was a number entered on a line on the title that said “Selling Dealer’s License Number.” I looked at the title and concluded he was probably just confused about what was or wasn’t supposed to go on that line. I said what was on that line had to just be his personal driver license number, because “Selling Dealer’s License Number” makes it sound like that’s what should go there. I told them they could look up what driver license numbers in Florida look like, and see that was clearly what had happened. They could Google his name and see he did not own a car dealership or sell cars for a living. No, they said, he had to fill out a form saying he made a mistake. That he didn’t mean to use his dealer license number. When I protested that he wasn’t a dealer, they shrugged.
Having to mail him a form and have him mail it back would take weeks, with the Post Office in its current shambolic state. Was there really no other way?
The DMV people shook their heads. “Prove it,” they said.
I missed the end of Next Window Man’s interaction, but I did see him dejectedly walk out. I followed, after having already paid $314 to register a car I never even wanted to have to have.
Two weeks earlier, I had to prove I live in the State of California, at a specific address. You’d think this would be easy. But our landlord still—now nearly 7 weeks after we signed it and despite 3 increasingly shrill e-mails—hasn’t given us the copy of our lease with their signature on it. If you’re a 1099 worker, you don’t have 1099 forms with your new address on them. Bank statements take a month to update. Most utility bills don’t come until after you’ve been there a month. If you’ve signed up for paperless billing, the DMV will think you’re lying if you give them a print-out of your statement. They tell you that you have to tell them you live here within 10 days, but the ways in which you can tell them you live here do not necessarily come to you within those 10 days.
The frustration of simply trying to obtain the necessary documents to continue to live in the place I live, as the person I already am, and to drive the car that I own, pushed me to tears yesterday. Me, an overeducated person who has plenty of social support and doesn’t have to use any means-tested state services. Imagine needing an interpreter. Imagine not knowing how to advocate for yourself. Imagine not having the time to go spend another entire morning at the DMV.
“Prove it.” Prove you are who you say you are, that you live where you live, that you entered the state on a certain date. You can come to doubt all of these things, trying to hack your way through the bureaucratic overgrowth. Is this really your name? Is your father really your father? Are you trying to pull a fast one on the State of California?
Is there really no better way to set up a functioning society than by forcing its members to constantly prove basic facts of their existence via a byzantine, bewildering system of forms and interrogations? As Elon Musk moves his official residence to Texas to avoid paying California taxes, does the State of California really have to charge me an $82 “late” registration fee when I was physically unable to register a car the state won’t accept that I own?
Am I a libertarian now, or an anarchist?