> What percentage of the population has an ID in a place where it's difficult to get one vs somewhere it is easier?

Not the OP, but except for passports (and passport cards)... there isn't really any federal-level ID in the US (and passport booklets/cards are expensive, just a bit over $100 IIRC).

The nearest equivalent in the state level are driver's licenses, which are also on the expensive side considering the ancillary costs (because it's a driver's license, not just an identification card). This is also the reason why US-centric companies like PayPal, for this exact reason, accepts a driver's license as proof of identification (obviously where not otherwise prohibited by local laws).

Some (New York for example) do have an ID (called a non-DL ID, that's how embedded driver's license is in the US), but most states do not have a per se ID.

> What constitutes an ID being expensive?

Developing countries, rather ironically, issue their IDs for free? Okay, indirectly paid by taxes, but there's no upfront cost. The above-mentioned identity documents have a clear cost attached to them.

> How is the rest of the world dealing with this problem? Do you think that their democratic processes might be compromised because of it?

Cannot talk about other countries (because there is an ID system and it's not a controversial affair to them), but instead I'll answer with a reflection of the US system.

Unfortunately, American ID politics are hard, mainly due to concerns of surveillance, but I think (only my opinion) because some of them want those historically disenfranchised (even if a fully native-born US citizen) de facto disenfranchised. This means that there is no uniform and freely-issued identification system in the US (or even a requirement to do that at the state level). Unfortunately, this... is a tough nut to crack, politically-speaking.

Because it's SRAM, and therefore it still can lose its electrons because we're working with cells a few atoms thick? The loss is not necessarily in L1 (where it's replaced frequently), but in L3 which now has memory comparable to PCs in the early 2000s (and can have its data "stuck" in the same physical area for minutes).

You can register a (personal, not M365) Microsoft Account without Outlook.com by just supplying a different email address in the signup portion.

Also you can have (or was that had - not sure) a (again personal, not Workspace) Google account without Gmail by using a different email address.

Eh, they were definitely from Xerox (so it would be unclear since that both Windows and the Mac System Software derived some of their UI elements from Xerox experiments)