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

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

inkstonenews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 335 posts

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

#301

Post by coldtea »

pseingatl wrote: post #282
coldtea wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Child support can be based on imputed income. Where income is imputed, it does not exist, e.g., you do not have to pay tax on imputed dollars because they don't exist. So there are no bank accounts to seize because they cannot contain imputed dollars. If a person doesn't have a W-2 salary, there is nothing to garnish. In these cases, courts can and do order the debtor to prison.

>In these cases, courts can and do order the debtor to prison.

Well, in these cases, courts shouldn't and mustn't do it. If the law says that, it's a bad law.

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

#302

Post by coldtea »

walshemj wrote: post #187
Frondo wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Has the whole "inalienable rights" thing passed you by - given we are talking about the USA

Those are just words on a document some old people wrote. Not a law of nature.

The only thing keeping then "unalienated" is actual people, with guns and jails, etc, to prevent others from alienating them.

And even so, those people keep unalienated whatever they're ordered to keep by those who pay their salaries. In practice those rights have been alienated time and again, whenever those wanted it.

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

#303

Post by ddeokbokki »

Aunche wrote: post #87
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

> The social credit score in China... penalizes you for associating yourself with individuals who have low scores. This isn't the same social credit that is mentioned in this article. What you're describing is a speculated feature of a social credit system that doesn't even exist yet.

Doesn't exist but is well under way already like seen in this Vice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkw15LkZ_Kw

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

#304

Post by alanwong »

dis-sys wrote: post #298
alanwong wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a personal attack and a false statement. How can this, for example, be considered "China bashing"? > China, undisputed king of electric transport (inkstonenews.com)

Mentioned data is here - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=alanwong 15 out of the most recent 30 submissions from your account are China related news, 94% of them are negative. Citing such publicly available stats that can be easily verified by the public is now considered as personal attack? Keep arguing whether 94% or 100% of your submissions are negative doesn't really change anything. Maybe inkstonenews.c…

No, I didn’t refer to your citing of my previous submissions as a personal attack. I referred to a different part of your comment, since deleted. Anyway, this exchange doesn’t add any value to the discussion. Have a nice and peaceful day.

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

#305

Post by nickthemagicman »

mruts wrote: post #113
godelski wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if you need a car for/to reach work? This is America. So the answer is almost certainly: "Yes, you need your car to reach work."

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%

Semantics. They gave no qualification on their definition of 'almost certainly'. 5% is almost certainly enough for me.

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

#306

Post by nickthemagicman »

aperrien wrote: post #167
gwright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's how it used to be actually.

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

#307

Post by Frondo »

yepguy wrote: post #225
Frondo wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not actually trying to distinguish at all -- the OP spoke of rights stemming from nature, and, as you said, any you'd describe as such are basically theological in nature.

The thought experiment I'd run is, just like the one of science vs religion: start from scratch, look for the rights that every society has in common.

Property? Nope. Freedom of speech, association, whatever? Nope. The one I think might be universal would be the right to marry someone; I can't think of ever reading about a society where the right to marry and start a family was not a part of it. (Which we also don't really recognize as an explicit right anywhere in modern society, do we?)

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

#308

Post by powerapple »

qlk1123 wrote: post #196

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 "polit…

"..... I don't know how it works ..... however, I can certainly say that , there must be ....."

you lost me there.

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

#309

Post by andreilys »

csomar wrote: post #162
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 perso…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china...

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

#310

Post by powerapple »

alanwong wrote: post #269
dis-sys wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what's going to happen to people who're entering a debt spiral, and are as a result further punished by the system? please stop spreading false info. people on that "laolai" list are those who intentionally refuse to pay their debt when they have the resources to do so. as also explicitly mentioned in your own article, they are punished to the extent of being inconvenience to do certain things, e.g. in your des…

The point is, as demonstrated in the article, high speed train isn’t always a luxury. And the punishment can have the opposite effect of making people to pay their debts.

On the contrary, the system works really well. Most people pay off their debts with money come magically when they found out they couldn't fly.
Post reply on HN