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

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

#191

Post by deogeo »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #185
deogeo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this quora answer [1] that quotes a whole bunch of court cases, the whole 'privilege, not a right' thing is bullshit. Try taking it to the logical conclusion - what else is a privilege, and can therefore be arbitrarily denied? A bank account? Traveling by plane or train? Connecting your house to the power/water/sewage grid? Having a post address? Buying or renting a house? Sending your children to school…

Not to mention, we've built our whole society around driving. If we were built like the Netherlands, it'd be one thing, but driving is a necessity in the USA. Take it away and people can't even function in most places.

Yes, but be careful with the argument that it's bad because it forbids a necessity. It doesn't defend activities that are less 'necessary'. You don't need a soldering iron at home - the registered one at work is plenty. You don't need a decompiler, or a rooted smartphone, or to run unsigned kernels, or your own mail server. One by one, activities you're permitted to do can be chipped away, till all that's left is work and consuming sanitized entertainment.

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

#193

Post by braythwayt »

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…

The evidence is that incarceration just doesn’t work to deter crime or discourage recidivism. But America has the largest prison population in the world, and IIRC, the largest proportion of its own citizens in prison.

In a country that values punishment over any empirical improved outcomes, I wouldn’t hold my breath for people to care that taking a driver’s license away for unpaid support will end up hurting the children involved, or society as a whole.

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

#194

Post by braythwayt »

lisper wrote: post #163
wwweston wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Democracy works elsewhere, don’t condemn it because it cannot magically make one country a better place.

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

#195

Post by dgzl »

massivecali wrote: post #45
AmVess wrote: post #32

USA is heading down this road, too. 21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt. This is ass backwards and destructive thinking. I am certain this is just the start of greater restrictions on the unfortunate.

As I've been reminded countless times, "driving is a privilege not a right". You can lose your license for all kinds of 'unfair' reasons that do not make sense, and I agree it's heavy handed to include student loan debt, but until it is Federally acknowledged that all citizens have a right to drive (after passing proper license tests), then this downward progression will continue. In California you can't even registe…

> but until it is Federally acknowledged that all citizens have a right to drive

I guess we're not applying the tenth amendment here? As in, we have rights not explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

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

#196

Post by qlk1123 »

Rumor has had it that there is a social credit system in China, and now this report reveals one part of it, which I believe is also just one small piece in the whole mass surveillance puzzle.

As a Taiwanese, I don't know how the system works, nor can I feel the same as what Chinese citizens under that surveillance feel. However I can certainly say that, there must be an another part of the system that monitors "political activists" against CCP. Let's call this part as X below.

Once you are in the blacklist of X due to reasons like criticizing Chinese government, you loses some rights implicitly, and the worst part is that X applies even if you are not a Chinese citizen. I have two examples here:

1. Taiwanese rights advocate Lee Ming-che held in China

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39428220

Lee has been in prison since 29 March 2017, because he "ruined Nation Security." He was retained for months before he had a trial.

2. [Documentary] Self-censorship by Kevin H.J. Lee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpHFVZX2TuA

He criticized CCP and then he could not obtain a visa to even Hong Kong. In this documentary, many instances of such censorship are mentioned, and you can see how the atmosphere is under such surveillance.

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

#197

Post by natmaka »

AmVess wrote: post #32

USA is heading down this road, too. 21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt. This is ass backwards and destructive thinking. I am certain this is just the start of greater restrictions on the unfortunate.

It may be induced by all industrial societies, as stated in the Unabomber Manifesto (among others).

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

#198

Post by jkaplowitz »

dgzl wrote: post #195
massivecali wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've been reminded countless times, "driving is a privilege not a right". You can lose your license for all kinds of 'unfair' reasons that do not make sense, and I agree it's heavy handed to include student loan debt, but until it is Federally acknowledged that all citizens have a right to drive (after passing proper license tests), then this downward progression will continue. In California you can't even registe…

> but until it is Federally acknowledged that all citizens have a right to drive I guess we're not applying the tenth amendment here? As in, we have rights not explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

I'm skeptical that the Supreme Court would agree that a right to drive is one of those rights. Not only did driving not exist when the tenth amendment was proposed or ratified, nowhere in the world (to the best of my knowledge) is driving treated as a right.

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

#199

Post by jcadam »

headcanon wrote: post #93
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.

I was once sitting in a courtroom for something unrelated and saw a 19 year old kid go to jail for 3 months for not paying child support. Not sure how he's going to pay it back in there, but if all you have is a hammer...

Debtors' prisons are technically illegal. But... yea.

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

#200

Post by mk926 »

You guys do not live in China, you guys cannot understand that in China biggest problem is credit, many people not pay the debt deliberately, many people do not follow the rule. even the reporter herself do not live in China, she live in Hong Kong. I do not know if the social credit system is the right solution, but think more how many people lives in this country, and how law is weak in this country, and how mass the society that is not like western country.
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