Well, I can see some use cases. But they’re usually not pointed down in the bowl.

for a family of 4 it would cost almost $700 to get passports

You lost me there for a moment. In France, a biometric passport costs 86 € (~$100) for 18+ people, 42 € (~$49) for kids between 15-17, and 17 € (~$20) for people younger than 15. It lasts 10 years for adults, and if you renew your national ID card and passport at the same time, you only pay for one (ID card alone is 25 €, ~$29).

$700 for a family of 4 sounds insane. But if there’s no incentive, I guess I get it. I basically kept using my passport for a few decades instead of having an ID card, so it feels more natural to me.

Compare that to a European who could travel 100 km on the train and be in another country.

We don’t need a passport to go to most other European countries, fortunately.

Is it that uncommon to have a passport in the US? That’s basically part of the common ID paper you’d have here.

Storage space, ensuring quality settings, supporting more device than “your tv”, smaller bandwidth requirements.