Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system • Hacker News Board

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#161

Post by coldtea » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

This Kafkaesque system will be the end result of the constant increased collection of information from governments (and private businesses, which is the same, they're bed-pals, only after a certain size it's the businesses that wear the strap-on) everywhere.

Technology is a multiplier. It can give us some irrelevant goods (basically, access to every article, news, movie, information without effort, in other words, without any real investment from us, or the ability to make some bureaucratic experience faster, while helping add tons of new bureaucratic requisites that weren't there before), but it mostly multiplies control, and thus dystopia.

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#162

Post by csomar » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #48

Anytime a criticism of China's social credit score is brought up, there's always a "yeah but US credit score", yet I still don't understand how the two are even in the same ballpark. The social credit score in China is far more invasive and penalizes you for associating yourself with individuals who have low scores. To compare the two is disingenuous and reaks of whataboutism

There are 13million in China social credit system. That's around 1% of the population. On the other hand, the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Which would you prefer? Be thrown in jail; or be limited some freedoms/privileges?

I'll take limited freedom. Maybe, then, I'll have a simple chance to prove my case. From Wikipedia, 21% of prisoners in the US are unsentenced. That's roughly 400,000 persons.

It's as crazy to think that close to a half million people are sitting behind bar with no sentence and probably no resources to fight back.

Yes, China is bad. But I think it is doing better than the US given the resources it has and the population challenges.

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#163

Post by lisper » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #97

lisper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but none of that changes the fact that suspending someone's driving privilege as a punishment for failing to pay a debt is incredibly stupid and counterproductive.

That's if you're oriented on policy goals like getting the debt where it's owed by providing consequences that aren't crippling and keeping the individual who owes it in the best position to actually repay. There are people who think in very different terms, where the primary goal is protecting a moral norm they have in mind, and the focus (possibly even "obsession") is going to be doing that by exacting a punishment…

Yes, some people choose to cut off their nose to spite their face. I'm not one of those people. I think people who are willing to make life worse for everyone in service of some moral ideology are idiots, and they make me question the wisdom of democracy.

But that's just me.

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#164

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

gwright wrote: post #157

TulliusCicero wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and a 45 minute car commute that can't be replaced by public transit is...well, not uniquely American, but certainly a hell of a lot more common in the US than most other developed countries.

The situation seems a bit more nuanced than that: https://daliaresearch.com/the-countries-with-the-longest-and...

...is this data reliable? It seems to contradict other studies I've seen. And I don't just mean that it contradicts the parts that support my point. I was under the impression that Japan had generally longer commutes than the US, for example.

But in any case, it doesn't seem to contradict anything that I said.

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#165

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #156

TulliusCicero wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, other developed countries where driving seems really necessary for most people are Canada and Australia, maybe NZ? Admittedly I'm far from an expert in this, but I live in Germany now, have visited a bunch of countries in Europe, plus Japan, and that's certainly the impression I get. Right now our family of 3 living in a sleepy part of Munich gets by fine without a car, and we've visited lots of litt…

"8 % of the EU workforce commutes to work in a different region" (NUTS 2 defined region: different province, city, etc).

And this has what, exactly, to do with my comment?

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#166

Post by jondubois » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

The bankruptcy system in the western world is far too lenient; it encourages ruthless risk-taking behavior which benefits selfish people at the expense of those who are socially conscientious. This social credit system doesn't seem so bad when you put things into perspective.

If our system punished selfish people more, as a conscientious individual, I would be better off. I don't buy this bullshit that selfish people drive the engines of progress; they don't drive it; they just capture the proceeds of progress.

John D. Rockefeller himself admitted that "He who works all day, has no time to make money".

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#167

Post by aperrien » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

gwright wrote: post #154

freedomben wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because the government took over most student loans a few years ago[1], and they make the rules (and want you to pay). [1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Feds-take-o...

As a taxpayer, I want you to pay also. I also want the government out of the educational loan business and think that some of the financial risk should be borne by the educational institutions. Making educational loans dischargeable in bankruptcy sounds reasonable on the surface but it problematic when you consider that a newly minted college graduate basically has no assets. Allowing the loan to be dischargeable wou…

Maybe make that type of debt dischargeable in 14 years, rather than 7? Or maybe make the clock on bankruptcy start ticking directly after graduation?

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#168

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #153

TulliusCicero wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving being a privilege, not a right, is only awkward in the US because of how absurdly car dominant it is. Being unable to drive in many other developed countries is barely an issue for most people.

Well, what if you do one of jobs that require you to drive? Bus drivers, taxi drivers, truckers, delivery people, etc, are not lesser citizens... Plus, who said people in the developed countries don't commute, or that even if they have public transport, having to and waste extra hour or hours in many cases (to wait at stops and to change buses or subway lines, etc), is small matter in the extra effort, free time, and…

> Well, what if you do one of jobs that require you to drive?

Don't do the thing that gets your license revoked? And if it happens, get a different job?

> Plus, who said people in the developed countries don't commute, or that even if they have public transport, having to and waste extra hour or hours in many cases (to wait at stops and to change buses or subway lines, etc), is small matter in the extra effort, free time, and health impact on the person doing it compared to being able to just drive there?

Well, if it's just convenience, then that seems to fit the definition of privilege, no?

> Not everybody in Europe lives in Amsterdam or some such city, nicely close to walking distance or a single public transit line to work.

This is a ridiculous strawman. You don't need to live in a major world city to have effective non-driving commute options around.

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#169

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #166

The bankruptcy system in the western world is far too lenient; it encourages ruthless risk-taking behavior which benefits selfish people at the expense of those who are socially conscientious. This social credit system doesn't seem so bad when you put things into perspective. If our system punished selfish people more, as a conscientious individual, I would be better off. I don't buy this bullshit that selfish people…

if you are born poor you miss out on the benefits that allow people to be successful. Take this site for example it encourages people to take risk and start a business. Worst that can happen if most of us fail is that we move in with our parents. If you grew up poor, maybe your parents don't have a place for you to stay if you fail so the ability to start a business is essentially closed to you as you don't have the safety blanket of your middle class colleagues.

To claim that people who declare bankruptcy are selfish is quite a blanket statement and leads me to believe that you have never known poverty. Try being poor or even border line and breaking a leg or having a child get cancer. Try getting laid off for even a few weeks when over 40% of Americans cant even come up with $400 to cover an emergency.

Re: Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system

#170

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Mar 26, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

ada1981 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. I sometimes manufacture physical products. I could state publically that I won’t. I could also not buy products made in China personally. In general we ought to try to change things we don’t like. I can’t imagine the people of China like this system do they?

They do, actually! Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-p... Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government. Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Put…

Its also illegal in Russia to make negative statements about the government or state. What people say in public about leadership is quasi dictatorships is possibly different than what they think in private.