Agree in principle, and different people’s experiences would likely be different. The times when I accepted 0-review guests, they turned out to be problematic (undeclared guests, etc.), and I don’t seem to have trouble filling dates with guests with previous positive reviews, so I just don’t bother.
One benefit of Identity Verified with a government issued ID is that it makes it less likely that someone with a criminal record would even bother going through the verification process. And I like to think it acts as a psychological check on potential bad behavior by guests without a criminal record. Sort of like the “our insurance needs it” white lie coz the guest doesn’t really know how exactly the ID is used by Airbnb.
The reality is that Airbnb doesn’t share IDs with hosts and its government ID check probably doesn’t mean a whole lot because I get IBs from folks whose face I can’t even make out in their profile pic, so it would be impossible for a machine to even check their ID against their profile pic. I’d say it is better than nothing for avoiding really bad apples but agree it doesn’t mean “better guests” in the sense of low-maintenance well-communicating guests.