What exactly are you proposing? That services require you to have a costly account to mitigate the potential to create thousands of accounts for free? Why donate to miners and not a set of charities? Why exclude people who only have an annual income of 200$?
Well, it's the miners and the blockchain that are verifying the veracity of the transaction that creates the identity, the idea is to send a special transaction with no recipient or amount, just fees. And I think the $200 figure is kind of notional, they imply that in the text. The fact that it's a fees-only transaction should give you an idea of the price range they will start from from for the cheapest.
This has probably been answered already, but what stops me from keeping the transaction to myself (not broadcasting it) and mining for the block that contains the transaction myself, so that the fees go to me, and I essentially don't pay fees? (Or at least mining for it with a mining pool I control, so that I get some chunk of the fee back?)
It's not been stated in this variation before, and I think you may be on to something there (others that tried to pose mining your own ID "what if"s were on to nothing).
From the way I understand it, if you solo mined or operated a pool, someone could do just what you're suggesting (they'd have to bide their time until they got a block in the chain, though). Worse, they could submit a very expensive ID sacrifice, and use it to give the illusion to anyone checking that ID in conjunction with the providing of goods/services to the ID holder that the holder should be more trustworthy than otherwise, as they did spend a fortune on their ID after all! Who would want to throw that away! Furthermore, a big enough miner could make a side business of selling IDs that cost him nothing at less than "cost".
