Ok, but how is your phone authenticated as belonging to you? If you use a pin that is locally stored and not calling to a server somewhere, you kill the device resale market and introduce obsolescence into all such devices. If your device is using this master authenticator pin to access all your other services, the device needs to be uniquely yours.
Also, in order for these services to authenticate you, there needs to be some exchange of data and they need verifying information or their services wouldn't be very secure. In fact they'd be much more vulnerable to exploits lacking any server side authentication process. The binary yes/no question is pretty much how authentication already works except the question it's asking is yes/PW rather than yes to a bunch of other questions.
The more low tech ID card is actually much safer in general. I do agree though that making state IDs machine readable makes them less secure. I would say any system that requires establishment or verification of identity is always going to be a require a database somewhere, even if only at the point of activation. Realistically for what you're describing, the state still ends up either being the centralized authenticator or the activator.
