It's the little laws, stupid: bureaucratic punishment German style

Imagine a world in which you are flooded with irrelevant news.

See, easy.

Now imagine, you are somewhere in Germany and you lose your driver's license.

Of course, it won't happen to you personally, just imagine it happens to your worst enemy. If you don't have one, pick one just for this exercise.

In the U.S., this event may give rise to a bout of DMV phobia.

For readers who have never stood in line at an American Department of Motor Vehicles office, a reasonably close description would be this: Your blood pressure doubles, adrenaline flows freely, and you catch yourself hoping that the asteroid announced as a fly by spectacle this week would ever so slightly veer off course and put you out of your misery.

In Germany, with its efficient public administration, it is different.

You check the county web site for required documents, go to the office, wait a mere hour, and you are done.
The list of items to bring is short: one recent biometric passport photo and a valid photo ID.
The cost of a replacement driver's license is 35 Euros if reported stolen to the police, 70 Euros if lost. **

Wait, what? 35 Euros if reported stolen to the police, 70 Euros if lost.

Your blood pressure doubles, adrenaline flows freely, and you catch yourself hoping that the asteroid announced as a fly by spectacle this week would ever so slightly veer off course and put you out of your misery. 

See, this is the perfect example of the "little laws" we mentioned in the post's title.

Because it really doesn't matter if a country has ratified the UN declaration of human rights.

Everybody ratifies that. The true colors of any administration are shown in the routine interactions and rules.

In 2015 Germany, you get punished, pure and simple, if you lose your driver's license.

We'd love to see German statistics of stolen and lost driver's licenses. The best statistics would be from before institution of this form of semi judicial punishment and after.

No, we did not lose a license, we did read a few county web sites.

** Rounded for convenience.