41–50 of 271 posts
Isn't this bad from an economic perspective? I thought the gov't wanted to encourage spending and increase the velocity of their money. This directly hinders that.
Why do people still live there (apart from those who cannot move)?
Lots of western expats live in China because they have economic opportunities they don’t have access to in their home countries. Says something about the state of western world when so many young people go to China to climb the career ladder. Social mobility in western countries is almost non existent.
Now this.
I have already been thinking about the possible necessity of a decentralized personas. If an employer wants to see my office persona, then I don't want those people to see my gaming persona. No reason to connect these things to a central identity.
Decentralized personas are natural in the entertainment world where you take on different characters. Authors might publish under a different name. Now even a Twitter bot with a crap AI can be a popular persona.
As negative as a turn of events as this is, it could be a positive in odd sort of way in which we might view hackers blowing open vulnerabilities. This software, like any can spread like FB - crawling across the globe and no extra cost to the goons running it. I wonder what my score in China might be even though I don't live there. Maybe next, Valenzuela. Now is the time to construct a defense - if even possible.
This is obviously going to be an unpopular sentiment, but I am somewhat excited to observe the results, and I'm glad this is happening during my time on Earth. Yes, it is a horrible thought, but in many ways inevitable: if the tech exists, it will be used for both good and evil. Better that other societies can see the outcome sooner rather than later.
> People are awarded credit points for activities such as undertaking volunteer work and giving blood donations while those who violate traffic laws and charge “under-the-table” fees are punished. > Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online. This reminds me a lot of that Black Mirror episode where everyone upvotes and downvotes each oth…
That black mirror system is p2p when China's system is centralized. I believe the black mirror system is worse.
Well here in the US we have an actual credit system in place. And since basic necessities are often dependent on credit rating (employment; housing purchaes ; rentals; vehicle financing/lease) it’s pretty dystopian. Not to mention for nearly 20 years now we have had secret no fly lists (no due process to get on or off) and even secret kill lists (no due process), I think it’s just another way to skin the cat, and may…
Secret no fly lists: impact a very small slice of the population. Try to find more than a few instances of legitimate travelers being blocked, which is something you can do with freedom of speech and freedom of press. I think less than 2000 are us citizens. The program in China is going to disenfranchise entire slices of their population and further limit their social mobility.
Secret kill lists are for terrorits. We don’t kill our own citizens. I’m an Enlightenment since everyone deserves due process, but in a defending our national interests sense, that can never be the case and never has been.
Our systems aren’t perfect, but every first world nation has some system to track your financial behavior and it impacts you negatively if you don’t make your payments. I just don’t see any strong relationship to the oppression in China and what happens in the US. Our systems aren’t perfect and your criticism has merit, but not as a comparison to China on this topic.
Why do people still live there (apart from those who cannot move)?
Probably because the regime doesn't actively affect most people's lives much more than a regular government. It's just people who speak out or act out that get oppressed. This is just me assuming, but is guess that China is OK for quiet, well behaved unquestioning citizens.
While China has a bad record in human rights, I suggest to apply a lot of source criticism what comes to "social credit system." Especially here in Hacker News comments where discussion is generally more intelligent. Here is more in-depth and fact based article about the topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social...
Well here in the US we have an actual credit system in place. And since basic necessities are often dependent on credit rating (employment; housing purchaes ; rentals; vehicle financing/lease) it’s pretty dystopian. Not to mention for nearly 20 years now we have had secret no fly lists (no due process to get on or off) and even secret kill lists (no due process), I think it’s just another way to skin the cat, and may…
As for no-fly: agreed that is a stain on our democracy.
It could be argued that the primary purpose of a government is to make things better for people (with deliberately broad/vague words used there). I'm not sure how this qualifies. There's certainly a lot of negative language in that article, and negative language has a habit of not making things better for people.
The idea is that social credit discourages behaviour which is bad for people (e.g. traffic violations and small-scale tax evasion) and that makes things better for people. I think it's easy to see how this could be effective, but the criticism is really about fairness (due-process). Proponents would probably argue that the consequences are relatively small compared to traditional criminal justice (going to jail; execution) so it doesn't matter, and the streamlining of justice outweighs the disadvantages.