Yeah, and that's fine. Especially for corporations and other fictitious entities. It's the highly personal aspects of this system that disgust me. The personal habits and nickel-and-dime shit that it vacuums up to determine a score.
While not an expert myself, when I have looked deeper into the reporting that makes claims like this, I often find that they're speculating based on one-off statements, not describing an actual extant system. I feel like the US media, even the most respectable publications, don't take appropriate care to separate fact from fiction re: social credit. For example, I found this article really surprising: https://foreign…
Honest question, isn't this same big data technical effort supporting the round up of Uighurs[1]?
I get that the main story is about a debtor and credit, but the concept of stratification based on surveilence-data is word-for-word 1984.
It's a privilege sure. Except the US is really good at building dysfunctional cities that require a car to live.
Sad that you're getting downvoted, but it's true. Almost all US cities are pretty terrible to get around in without a car. That's bad for people's budgets generally, but it's especially bad for the poor/working class where a car represents a substantial financial burden, and of course some other demographics like the handicapped, elderly, and college students. Plus it's more expensive for the government, causes more…
Upside for automobile makers and oil and gas companies, the ones who matter in America.
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 chil…
Call me a radical but I don't understand why we put people in jail and just leave them there to rot. Empathy, it seems is our deterrent. I for one am a proponent for the death sentence or medical human testing as an alternative. We would of course make sure to do this to inmates who are incapable of changing or adapting behavior to conform, and also only to those who we are 100% committed crimes. We can give them all the resource in the world so they can find their place in society and "fit" in. However, if they don't, then can help greater society by being subjects to human testing for medication or other alternatives, and if not, they get the death sentence. Not only can this speed up our progress in achieving our medical goals, such as, cure for cancer and the likes. But it can save the government some money which they can use for other things like education.
This is not the social credit system(edit based on OP comment: the dystopic social credit system that people are afraid of). This is just the list of discredited people("Shi Xin Zhe" list) published by China's court system. The whole list is published on http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/ You don't end up on the list for simply owing money (and it has nothing to do with social mis/conduct), you end up on the list for being su…
Inkstone editor and OP here. This IS China's social credit system. Lists of discredited people, often published by Chinese courts, are the primary mechanism by which punishment is meted out.
>Societies should define what is a privilege and what is a right. That's a hard no. I see where you're going with this, and we likely agree on 90% of this topic anyway, but the issue with society defining rights is that you end up letting the mob decide the "right" of green eyed people to live has just become a privilege. Rights stem from nature, and exist with, or without society. If a society wants to add to the li…
I don't mean this in a trollish way, but can you show me a "rights" molecule? Or explain what it would mean for rights to exist outside of a society?
Legal rights are things that society decides you're entitled to. Natural rights are basically theological in origin. Violating them transgresses the natural law regardless of what society decides (or even whether society exists, I guess).
It seems you're only considering legal rights, possibly because natural rights are difficult to justify from a secular perspective.
> But say, if he hadn't been sent to prison, would he have paid child support then? The amount could have been ordered to be taken from his bank account, or confiscated from his salary directly from his employer or payment system, or taken from his property. There's absolutely nothing that necessitates that he is sent to prison if he merely can't pay. Only if he has money and doesn't pay (and that after accounting fo…
I think it would be an interesting choice, that if you're sent to jail for lack of payment towards child support ( or any other debt ), the government pays your debt up to the point you get out.
This would have the unintended consequence of poor people voluntarily going to prison as a means of payment. The social implications of this would be devistating. class stratification is already a major issue in the country. The last thing we need is literal debtors prison.
Market solutions and the Justice system rarely intersect, and this is certainly an area where they should not.
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 chil…
Call me a radical but I don't understand why we put people in jail and just leave them there to rot. Empathy, it seems is our deterrent. I for one am a proponent for the death sentence or medical human testing as an alternative. We would of course make sure to do this to inmates who are incapable of changing or adapting behavior to conform, and also only to those who we are 100% committed crimes. We can give them all…
Great, let's start by making bad usernames illegal and you can be the first to try out the program.
5% of Americans take public transit to get to work. I wouldn't call that an almost certainty that you need a car. An almost certainty would be maybe under <.001%
> 5% of Americans take public transit to get to work. rephrasing: 95% of Americans take private transit to get to work. I would call that an almost certainty that you need a car.
Studies, especially in recent years, have shown that punishment is not an effective way of improving on self-destructive behavior. Usually things like procrastination and substance abuse are irrational symptoms of emotional drain and hopelessness, and punishment exacerbates those problems. There was an HN post about it just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487411 . Poverty and debt tend to also p…
OP and Inkstone editor here. I think you raised a really, really interesting point.
One thing I think many people overlook in China's social credit system is its stated goal – to create a system that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior – and whether this system can really tackle self-destructive behavior you describe, like debt.
And what's going to happen to people who're entering a debt spiral, and are as a result further punished by the system? Does the idea of social credit mean these people are simply abandoned?
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.
>21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt.
I can't find anything on this. I can find 22 states that can suspend some kind of state issued license if you fall behind on your student loan debt, but only 2 that say they can suspend your driver's license, and apparently those 2 don't really do it very often.
I think you misread an article talking about professional licenses.