Proof of Existence: How Bureaucracy Turns Rights into Privileges
In a world structured by borders and paperwork, does human dignity require state approval?
In Fantasmas, Julio Torres’s satirical “Proof of Existence” card captures a disturbing reality: today, human dignity itself is conditional, gated behind layers of bureaucracy. From India’s Aadhaar program to U.S. voter ID laws to Israel’s permit regime over Palestinians, bureaucracy is more than a means of managing resources; it is a weapon wielded to regulate the very essence of humanity. These systems demand that we prove our right to live, to move, to belong, and to survive. They turn basic rights into privileges, requiring us to earn dignity through endless compliance and documentation. Bureaucracy is not simply an inconvenience—it is an ideological assault, a system built to affirm that some lives are inherently valued less than others.
Anthropologist and activist David Graeber called this “bureaucratic violence.” Graeber argued that bureaucracies, rather than creating fairness, enforce structural cruelty. Bureaucracies don’t simply exist to maintain hierarchies—they exist to deepen them. In the capitalist state, bureaucracy becomes a tool for trapping the poor, the marginalized, and the colonized in cycles of dependency and subservience. Bureaucracies impose artificial scarcity and fragment our communities, turning survival itself into a state-sanctioned performance and a constant struggle.
Bureaucracy as the New Border
In the United States, bureaucratic gatekeeping has seeped into nearly every aspect of life. Tasks as routine as renewing a driver’s license or accessing healthcare have become mazes of paperwork and approvals, disproportionately obstructing the poor, undocumented, disabled, and communities of color. These systems reduce people to data points, transforming human beings into entries in a database designed to measure worthiness and discard the rest.
Healthcare is especially precarious—accessed not as a right but as a privilege at the end of an exhausting process of denials, referrals, and conditional approvals. In a neoliberal state, access to basic needs like housing, healthcare, and food is no longer guaranteed; bureaucracy has become the final arbiter of survival.
India’s Aadhaar biometric ID program presents a similar violence under the guise of “efficiency.” Aadhaar has stripped millions of their right to food, housing, and welfare, trapping the most vulnerable in a system that cares more for tracking data than for preserving lives. In Palestine, Israel’s permit regime is even more suffocating, governing nearly every aspect of daily life under occupation. Movement, employment, even family connections—these become privileges determined by a hostile bureaucracy, leaving Palestinians confined within an apartheid infrastructure. Bureaucracy, in these cases, does not merely administer; it acts as a border, dividing lives and limiting futures.
The Ruse of “Fairness” and “Security”
Bureaucratic systems justify themselves with claims of “fairness” and “security.” Voter ID laws in the U.S. are ostensibly about election integrity; Aadhaar claims to reduce welfare fraud; Israel’s permit system is labeled a security measure. These rationales obscure the truth: such systems are designed to exclude and control, to protect the powerful and deny the vulnerable.
Voter ID laws in the U.S. systematically disenfranchise marginalized communities, depriving the poor, elderly, and minority groups of political representation. In India, Aadhaar’s bureaucratic web leaves millions to fall through the cracks, excluded from essential services. Israel’s permit system controls every aspect of Palestinian life, enforcing hierarchies that treat the occupied as perpetual outsiders. Bureaucracy, far from being neutral, is a mechanism that reinforces power structures, entrenching control in the hands of the few while forcing the most marginalized to justify their existence at every turn.
Bureaucratic Gatekeeping and Psychological Violence
The psychological toll of living under these systems is profound. Imagine the quiet violence of constantly needing to prove that you are worthy—that your need for food, safety, and care is valid. This bureaucratic violence conditions people to feel mistrusted and isolated, reducing them to case numbers and data points.
In the U.S., those on Medicaid or SNAP must re-certify their poverty every few months, forced to repeatedly justify their needs as though survival itself is conditional. In Palestine, daily movements become acts of psychological endurance as Palestinians navigate checkpoints and permits simply to visit family or go to work. Bureaucratic gatekeeping does not only restrict access to resources; it isolates people from their sense of self and their communities, continually reminding them that their worth is negotiable, their humanity conditional.
Manufactured Scarcity and Capitalism’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
Systems like Aadhaar, U.S. voter ID laws, and Israel’s permit regime do not respond to scarcity; they create it. Artificial scarcity is a powerful tool wielded by capitalism and colonialism to turn basic needs into commodities, forcing communities to compete for survival. By making access to essential resources contingent on compliance, these systems instill the belief that scarcity is natural, that rights are finite, and that exclusion is unavoidable. This scarcity, however, is a manufactured tactic to ensure control—keeping people so focused on survival that they cannot build solidarity to challenge the system.
Graeber’s work exposed this illusion: scarcity is not inevitable; it is designed by systems that rely on our dependency and fear. Bureaucracy pits us against one another, transforming survival into a zero-sum game that protects entrenched hierarchies. By exhausting us with endless forms and qualifications, bureaucracies ensure we are too divided, too tired, and too isolated to envision collective liberation.
Imagining Rights Without Conditions
Graeber’s radical critique offers a glimpse of a different world—one where dignity is not rationed by bureaucratic decree but affirmed by our inherent humanity. Instead of systems built on scarcity and exclusion, we could create institutions based on universal access, communal care, and radical solidarity. Imagine a society where healthcare isn’t tied to corporate or bureaucratic approval, where voting is universally accessible, and where survival isn’t conditioned on meeting arbitrary standards. A society built on such values would honor dignity, belonging, and freedom as birthrights, dismantling the barriers bureaucracy uses to divide us.
For Palestinians, this vision would mean dismantling Israel’s permit systems and removing the apartheid walls that confine their lives. For those restricted by Aadhaar, it would mean abolishing the bureaucratic conditions that determine access to survival. In the U.S., it would mean rejecting bureaucratic tools that limit healthcare, education, housing, and political participation. True liberation demands a society where rights are unconditional, where access to health, housing, education, and freedom are not privileges but basic entitlements.
Toward a Society of Unconditional Belonging
The “Proof of Existence” card in Fantasmas symbolizes a world where rights are conditional, where dignity is rationed, and where humanity itself is a privilege. Bureaucracies like Aadhaar, U.S. voter ID laws, and Israel’s permit regime reveal the violence inherent in systems that reduce human worth to paperwork and compliance.
Graeber’s vision challenges us to recognize that these structures are not inevitable. We can reject artificial scarcity, refuse conditional rights, and work to build a world where humanity is not bureaucratically mediated but affirmed unconditionally. We can dismantle these borders, reject state-sanctioned violence, and insist that dignity requires no proof.
What would it mean to live in a world that didn’t demand “proof”? It would mean redefining our relationship to one another, creating spaces where solidarity is unconditional, and recognizing that our worth cannot be measured, limited, or sanctioned by any state. We would understand that humanity is too vast, too complex, to be contained within the narrow confines of bureaucratic files and forms.
Imagine a world where survival is not conditional, where belonging is not rationed, and where no one has to prove their right to exist. That is the world we must demand.
Together, we can create a society that tears down every gate, dismantles every wall, and affirms that our humanity, our dignity, and our freedom are boundless.
Here's another great review of Fantasmas: