Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 602 posts

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#341

Post by posterboy »

ithkuil wrote: post #278
posterboy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The caste system to me means to put people in the position of a caste on purpose. Just like the younger brothers in feudal europe were second class ... so a prince might just kill his older brother. Or literally enslaving countries wholesale as untouchables (the name being an improvement over beatables, I guess). I have a hunch that caste is cognate with castrate, but it's inexplicably "uncertain" as many such terrib…

It comes from "chaste" (Latin castus) through an intermediate form meaning pure/non-mixed

The intermediate form "castus" does go back to the same root as "castrate", according to wiktionary! Although the entries for the french and english homophones differ.

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#342

Post by mancerayder »

eggpy wrote: post #275
mancerayder wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminal background checks should be limited with regards to this criteria considered for employment.

I feel like "violent murderer and/or rapist" is something Id like to know about when considering hiring someone.

Except criminal background checks don't just aim at murderers and rapists. Felonies are often a drug-related, and often in states with stricter laws. And no, it's not your business if a job candidate got caught with a joint or even something worse years ago, on his own leisure time, or got a DUI in college a decade ago. Why should that continue to be allowed to be your business, if you hire (for instance) a programmer? Finally, what about time served? A person should be punished forever?

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#343

Post by bdcravens »

mieseratte wrote: post #318
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ---------------- Slavery is ALLOWED if guilty of a crime. So go on ahead and keep espousing "rah rah USA". We're still in a slave country.

Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion? My understanding is that work is optional, comes with a very small amount of compensation as incentive, but is otherwise non-compulsory. Is any US State or Federal prison running cotton plantations in Georgia with forced, uncompensated labor?

Some states (for instance, Texas) require (with medical exceptions) inmates to work, with no compensation

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#344

Post by DoreenMichele »

mieseratte wrote: post #318
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ---------------- Slavery is ALLOWED if guilty of a crime. So go on ahead and keep espousing "rah rah USA". We're still in a slave country.

Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion? My understanding is that work is optional, comes with a very small amount of compensation as incentive, but is otherwise non-compulsory. Is any US State or Federal prison running cotton plantations in Georgia with forced, uncompensated labor?

Yes, and there are plenty of articles about it. For example:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-...

It is also apparently mentioned in Hillary Clinton's memoirs that they had unpaid prison labor at the governor's mansion to save money.

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#345

Post by lopmotr »

allthenews wrote: post #271
sangnoir wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least here the things that can get you into that status are discrete, well-defined actions You would think that, but research shows systemic biases in the justice system throughout the entire funnel: from who gets more police attention, arrests, charges, plea deals and how heavy the sentences are. This is a sign the actions are not well-defined, and quite subjective.

>from who gets more police attention, arrests, charges, plea deals and how heavy the sentences are None of this detracts from the fact that these laws are ultimately relatively clear in their restrictions, compared to China's social score. Theft is theft. Drug possession is drug possession. Had these "unfairly" targeted individuals followed the law, they would not be subject to its penalties. Sure, I recognize that v…

How about those people going to prison for carrying a "gravity knife" in New York city? People who just bought a pocket knife for work, or an old knife wore out and became loose enough to open with one hand - hence illegal. The law in America is pretty arbitrary too.

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#346

Post by jakeogh »

Aunche wrote: post #279
jakeogh wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not paying fines" is about as open and fluid as it gets.

How is that open and fluid? Did you verify it by reading the law or did you just assume Big Scary China will do bad things? Lots of states in the US will suspend your driver's license for failing to pay non-traffic-related fines.

I once got 15 speed camera tickets on purpose, they are civil tickets, and the goal was to force them to serve me. It worked, and I successfully wasted their time until the server(s) stopped trying. Try that in China:)

Later we voted the cameras out >2 to 1. Try that in China too.

Second, you just made the argument for me, as you implied, fines are easy to define and redefine.

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#347

Post by sneak »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #293

I am deeply disgusted by false equivalency used in many posts this thread. Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this. The Chinese government owns and runs more than 50% of the economy and 100% of the industries they deem essential. They can not only cut your off completely from planes and trains, but also your electricity, driver license, internet, telephone, banks, ability to get any travel docu…

If the US Treasury lists you on the OFAC SDN list, it becomes illegal for most of the vendors of those services to do business with you.

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#348

Post by posterboy »

pm90 wrote: post #9

The thing that worries me most about the autocracy in China is that all of these Orwellian measures would actually work and then would be pointed out as an example to abandon our civil liberties in favor of a system that may be big brotherly but at least "your kids will always be safe, never be close to any bad person" (By We I'm referring to Democracies). It may also be a uniquely Chinese thing too though. China has…

yet I recently read that corruption is rampant in some parts of the huge country. It's hardly centralized nor evenly distributed.

Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

#349

Post by dragonwriter »

mieseratte wrote: post #318
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ---------------- Slavery is ALLOWED if guilty of a crime. So go on ahead and keep espousing "rah rah USA". We're still in a slave country.

Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion? My understanding is that work is optional, comes with a very small amount of compensation as incentive, but is otherwise non-compulsory. Is any US State or Federal prison running cotton plantations in Georgia with forced, uncompensated labor?

> Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion?

Yes, and it is precisely the reason the US is one of the few eligible countries not to have ratified the main current treaty against slavery, the ILO Forced Labor Convention.

> My understanding is that work is optional

Prison labor is generally mandatory for able-bodied prisoners in the federal system, and this is true in some state systems as well.

> Is any US State or Federal prison running cotton plantations in Georgia with forced, uncompensated labor?

Historically, slavery has often had compensation, and, yes, there are literally forced labor prison farms in the USA, such as the Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka “Parchman Farm”.

There have been some reforms since the origins of the penal slavery system in the US, in which the government involved literally rented convicted out to private businesses, but it remains a system of slavery, often involving a public/private partnership for profit.

Post reply on HN