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The $2 Trillion Rent We Pay to Sign Our Names

The $2 Trillion Rent We Pay to Sign Our Names

Americans spend $18-49 billion per year to make signing documents slower, more complicated, and more expensive than using a pen.

That's not a typo. We've taken something that's worked for 5,000 years (writing your name to indicate consent) and wrapped it in subscription software that costs 200-1000x more than it should. Over 50 years, this adds up to $2.4 trillion extracted from the productive economy.

DocuSign is the most successful example of rent-seeking in modern technology. They've convinced us that basic infrastructure should generate private profit.

It shouldn't.

The Absurdity in Practice

Your neighbor sells you their car. You agree on $8,000. Simple transaction.

Instead of signing the title with a pen (30 seconds, $0), your neighbor says "I'll DocuSign you the title." Now you need to create an account with a random tech company, verify your email, navigate their interface, and wait for your neighbor to "countersign" (which requires them to pay $15 because they hit their monthly limit).

Three days later, you get your title. For something you could have done in 30 seconds with a pen.

This happens millions of times per day across America. Job offers. Apartment leases. Medical forms. School permission slips. Every signature now routes through a for-profit middleman charging rent on basic civic function.

What DocuSign Actually Does

The technical reality is embarrassingly simple. DocuSign takes a PNG image of your signature, places it on a PDF, sends an email, and records a timestamp. That's it.

Cost to DocuSign: less than $0.01 per signature. What they charge: $2-10 per signature. Markup: 200 to 1000x.

Compare this to other infrastructure we stopped tolerating as private monopolies:

  • Toll roads: Replaced by public highways (we pay once via taxes, use forever)
  • Private mail: Replaced by USPS ($0.73 vs $20 private courier)
  • GPS: Government built it, opened for free civilian use (now enables $1.4 trillion in economic value)
  • Weather data: NOAA collects and provides free (generates $31 billion in annual economic value)

E-signatures are at the same inflection point. The technology is solved. The standards are mature. The only thing keeping it expensive is market capture.

Who Pays and How Much

The total economic drag is staggering:

Small businesses: $3-15 billion/year

  • Maria's HVAC company pays $540/year to send 270 contracts
  • That's half a month's rent for placing images on PDFs

Enterprises: $10-20 billion/year

  • Dr. Patel's medical practice pays $3,120/year for patient consent forms
  • That money could pay for a medical assistant one day per week

Government agencies: $200 million to $1 billion/year

  • Federal agencies paying separately for the same service
  • No shared infrastructure, no data sovereignty

Hidden consumer costs: $5-13 billion/year

  • Passed through in higher prices
  • $140 per American per year on average

Total annual extraction: $18-49 billion

Over 50 years, at current growth rates, this compounds to $2.4 trillion leaving the productive economy.

Here's what most people don't know: DocuSign signatures are not more legally valid than pen signatures or even email confirmations saying "I agree."

The legal standard under the ESIGN Act is simple:

  1. Intent to sign (demonstrated by the act of signing)
  2. Association with identity (verified by email, signature match, or other means)
  3. Record integrity (document hasn't been altered)

A pen signature meets all three. An email saying "I agree" meets all three. DocuSign meets all three.

Courts accept all of them equally.

So when your doctor's office makes you create a DocuSign account to acknowledge you received the HIPAA notice, they're not doing it because it's more legal. They're doing it because "everyone else does" and their vendor sold them a subscription.

What Government Should Do

Estonia solved this in 2002. Every citizen gets a government-issued digital ID. Free e-signatures for everyone. Works from anywhere in the world. No private company in the middle.

Result: 99% adoption. Ranked #1 globally in digital government. Saves 2% of GDP annually in paperwork costs.

The United States should do the same.

Phase 1: Build it

  • Fund existing open source projects (OpenSign, DocuSeal, Documenso)
  • Deploy for federal agencies first
  • Cost: $10-20 million one-time development
  • Immediate savings: $50-150 million/year in federal contracts

Phase 2: Open to citizens

  • Free signing for all Americans via Login.gov
  • No account creation, no subscription, no tracking
  • Works on any device, accessible interface
  • Cost: $5-10 million/year to operate

Phase 3: Enable business use

  • API access for companies (free or nominal fee for high volume)
  • Create real competition for DocuSign
  • Let private sector innovate on top of public infrastructure

50-year comparison:

Model Total Cost Who Benefits
DocuSign (current) $2.4 trillion Shareholders
Government service $520 million Everyone

Savings: $2.399 trillion over 50 years.

That's not a rounding error. That's enough money to rebuild every bridge in America twice.

The Business Model Question

Some will argue: "Government shouldn't compete with private sector."

This misunderstands what markets are for. Markets excel at competitive environments with real choice. E-signatures have network effects that create natural monopoly. DocuSign has 70% market share and 80% profit margins. This isn't a competitive market. It's rent extraction.

When private monopolies extract excessive rents on essential infrastructure, government has three options:

  1. Regulate them (like utilities)
  2. Break them up (like AT&T)
  3. Provide public alternative (like USPS vs FedEx)

The pattern is clear. When toll roads became extractive, we built public highways. When GPS was military-only, we opened it for free civilian use. When weather data was fragmented, NOAA consolidated and provided it free.

E-signatures follow the same logic. Everyone needs it. The technology is trivial. A monopoly is extracting billions. Government should provide it as public infrastructure.

This isn't radical. It's obvious.

The Counter-Arguments

"But government always fails at technology."

Sometimes yes (Healthcare.gov launch), sometimes no (GPS, weather.gov, Login.gov with 90+ million users). The difference is complexity and requirements.

E-signatures are simple: upload PDF, add signature fields, send email, log timestamp. This is easier than Healthcare.gov by orders of magnitude. More like GPS (clear mission, proven technology) than like IRS modernization (legacy system integration nightmare).

"But DocuSign provides jobs and innovation."

DocuSign employs ~7,000 people. That's 0.004% of the US workforce. Meanwhile, they extract $18-49 billion annually from businesses that could use that money to hire 360,000 to 980,000 people at $50,000/year.

The innovation argument is backwards. Monopoly infrastructure stifles innovation. GPS became free and enabled Uber, food delivery, precision agriculture. Weather data became free and enabled weather apps, flight safety, disaster preparedness.

Free e-signature infrastructure would enable innovation in contract automation, workflow tools, industry-specific solutions. Right now DocuSign monopolizes both infrastructure and applications. This is exactly backwards from how healthy technology ecosystems work.

"But what about security and compliance?"

Government systems can be just as secure as private systems. Often more so, because they face stricter oversight and can't cut corners for profit. Federal systems are FedRAMP authorized, FISMA compliant, and subject to GAO audit.

For sensitive use cases (classified documents, intelligence), government can deploy air-gapped instances. Try getting that from DocuSign.

What You Can Do

As a voter: Email your representative. Use this exact language: "E-signatures should be free public infrastructure like GPS or weather data. I want legislation creating a government e-signature service to save taxpayers billions."

As a business: Stop accepting "we need DocuSign" as unchangeable. Ask "why not open source alternatives?" Use OpenSign, DocuSeal, or Documenso. They're free, they work, and they're legally equivalent.

As a citizen: Question the premise. When someone says "I'll DocuSign you the form," ask "can't you just email me a PDF?" You'll find that 80% of the time, the answer is yes. The other 20% is habit, not necessity.

The Bottom Line

We took something simple (signing with a pen), made it slower and more expensive (subscription software), convinced ourselves it's progress (it's not), and now pay $18-49 billion per year for the privilege.

This is rent-seeking, not innovation. DocuSign isn't providing new value. They're extracting value from infrastructure that should be free.

The solution is straightforward: Make e-signatures public infrastructure. Build it once, use it forever. Like roads. Like GPS. Like weather data.

Estonia did this in 2002. We're 23 years late.

Every year we wait costs Americans another $18-49 billion. Over a lifetime, that's enough to send every American child to college debt-free.

So when someone asks "should government provide free e-signatures?" the real question is: should we keep paying DocuSign $2.4 trillion over 50 years for technology that costs $500 million to provide?

I know my answer.

Further Reading

Open source alternatives:

Government digital signature programs:

Legal framework:

  • ESIGN Act (Federal e-signature law, technology-neutral)
  • UETA (Uniform state law)

Market data:

Andy Dahley is a product leader who spent 20+ years at companies like Google and Meta building AI-powered products used by hundreds of millions of people. He writes about technology, design, and government policy at dahley.com.

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