[thomassmith65]

  even when people strongly have their real identity tied to 
  their digital or other activities, it amazingly often does 
  nearly nothing [...]

Is that based on any particular example? Off the top of my head, I can think of several mechanisms by which tying a pseudonym to a real identity could deter or address malicious behavior: law suit, jail time, loss of collateral, permanent ban of a human being from a service, etc.

   the ability to "decentralize" ID and anonymize oneself is more than worth [...]

Well, the downside is unstoppable crime, harassment, dis/misinformation... but let's entirely ignore all that, and just daydream about the valiant freedom fighters it will save from oppressive government /s

[ipaddr]

Connecting your digital identity opens you up to stalking, data mining, identity fraud and a host of other things not government related.

[thomassmith65]

Sure, but a pseudonymous digital identity can provide decent protection for those problems. If government wants the user's personal details, that's different, since, even if the information were never stored on computer, one could obtain it via court order – but the ability to do that is partly the point.

[nibbleshifter]

Personally, I think the state being able to deanonymize users is an antifeature. A bug that needs fixing.

[ETH_start]

>>but let's entirely ignore all that, and just daydream about the valiant freedom fighters it will save from oppressive government /s

The threat from governments and other entities that obtain a monopoly on violence is one that is not naturally self limiting. There is no right governments cannot deprive people of, making most of the methods people use to defend themselves from a threat (e.g. being discriminating when choosing who to associate with, hiring private security, etc) ineffective when dealing with threats posed by governments. Therefore, I think mitigating the dangers posed by the state should be the highest priority.

One way we know that achieves this is eliminating, via disintermediation of centralized platforms, the bottlenecks that magnify the power of the state, and reduce the political cost for those who control the state to enforce mass-surveillance or censorship edicts.

[helloworld11]

I can think of many (admittedly anecdotal but I think valid enough) examples. Just off the top of my head, Facebook is full of people who plainly use their real name and operate their account within the context of their real, in-person or professional circles of friends. Despite this, many of these people regularly place comments or posts that are blatantly rude, racist, spammy, fraudulent and so forth. It's a very common phenomenon and with little repercussions in most contexts. Social media and many other digital media forums are also loaded with people who regularly defraud others in ambiguous ways with little to no legal consequences. Imagine, if you go to a typical city police station in, say, nearly any North American city and report a non-violent property crime, the police will often straight up tell you that aside from filing a report, they'll do next to nothing else. Now imagine how much less they usually care in the case of legally grey cases of digital fraud below a certain genuinely large or frequently repeated amount. Even if you have a person's completely real name to point to, many criminal investigators just won't care, it won't be worth their time unless it's part of a massive pattern, involves lots of money, or affected someone with major political or social clout. A lack of anonymity means nothing in these contexts. At the same time, a lack of anonymity does indeed expose many other people to all kinds of unfair abuse that they have little recourse against.

As for your second point: The topic of dis/misinformation is a whole separate can of worms that I won't go into in detail right now, aside from saying that it's loaded with assumptions and shifty, politically charged definitions of what really is disinformation. This aside from the fact that I sincerely believe people have a right to share even stupidly mistaken opinions of X or Y, regardless of what certain self-proclaimed intellectual betters think should be allowed. With regard to your other points about crime and harassment, I refer you to my point above: firmly verified IDs barely dent these things. However they definitively do open people up to surveillance, censorship and the illegal leaking of vast troves of sensitive personal data from hacks of "secure" ID verification systems run by governments and corporations. To me, the trade-off is clearly in favor of giving people a basic right to hiding their real identity in all but absolutely necessary situations..