This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccura…
We're doing it to ourselves. We're the ones who keep clicking "I agree", who keep feeding these companies. Of course they're going to look to make a profit off of your data, there's nothing stopping them because we willingly gave it up.
So your suggestion is for everyone to become digital hermits? Start sending snail mail invoices and writing checks again?
This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccura…
I don't think I really see evidence of this. I mean, the IRS wants to catch people who cheat on their taxes. That's something they've been empowered to do for a long time. And when they catch people for that, they audit them, perhaps take them to court, and fine them. Which seems reasonable. If the IRS is going to start telling people they aren't allowed to ride trains or get on airplanes because they applied a deduc…
Well, I think to be fair to this, we had ought to look at the expansion of government agencies. The ATF, NSA, CIA, FBI, FDA, and so on and so forth are all additions to power. It's not a far reach to assume that granted some new ability to "remedy" some social ill, that establishment of some new agency is probable with implied powers and the necessary and proper clause. And it's really not necessarily just the IRS, but setting a precedent, there are various agencies that have been leveraging data-broker deals to track individuals. The more agencies jump on this the closer we get to crystallizing the behavior. If that's the case, it seems like a considerable hazard, which in the end could lead to some real consequences in the future. We've seen democracies turn into empires, and emperors of all kinds inherit those powers. This is the sort of gravitas no man, nor government had ought to be permitted to wield.
That's bad, but is not what we're talking about here. Not to mention it was a big scandal and that practice (which was not supported by any law or legal policy) has stopped. The China-style social credit system people worry about is something done on purpose, as designed, out in the open. Can we stop taking isolated incidents and framing them as official policy?
> what bad things might happen because of it > can we stop taking isolated incidents and framing them as official policy Which do you actually want? What bad things that might happen because of it, or that list of bad things massively trimmed down to just what the US government publicly sanctions as official policy?
Don't forget to add parallel construction to the list of options too: bad things that then help make a separate case using sanctioned methods.
Agree with Sevastopol how is it even similar? I ask, honestly, if anyone else one here is seeing a large influx of intentionally skewing of what the US does and makes it comparable to some terrible policy that China does. It really feels like there are a lot of people with strong Chinese interests mudding the waters of debate by equating the US with China. Feels very much like the Russian disinformation campaigns as…
>"It really feels like there are a lot of people with strong Chinese interests mudding the waters of debate by equating the US with China." What you say feels to me as Joseph McCarthy has just sprung back to life.
Is there a United States senator in this thread compelling people to testify, and then ruining their careers and livelihoods over baseless claims?
Idea: get together some money, buy data of 100 of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Publish everything found, see if the laws are then changed...
A good start, but their profiles are probably incredibly well scrubbed (or whatever is out there is already mitigated). Instead, collect it on every Congressperson and then see how fast things change. Most politicians don't have the means to scrub their backgrounds like multi-million dollar PR-vulnerable CEOs.
Seems more likely that those same Congresspersons (Congresspeople?) will try to stomp you out of existence, before making any changes to the law.
I don't imagine people with such amount of power and connections to just roll over because "they caught us with the hand in the cookie jar!"
Credit score for ghee most part tries to assure lenders you can repay your debts. Social credit score is about how close you hew to proscribed behavior at large.
Your credit score is run before you can buy a house or rent an apartment. We are already there.
The difference between a credit score and a social credit score system is one is based on debt payment history and the other based on political dissent & debt payment.
Currently saying "Lets Go Brandon" doesn't drop your credit score, in China you may lose quite a few points for posting that pesky bear that likes honey.
Why do you need more similarities? The mass data collection completes the system.
Because we need to understand the purpose of the data collection and what bad things might happen because of it. If Treasury is using this data to catch people who violate economic sanctions, ok. If the IRS is using this data to catch people who cheat on their taxes, ok. I don't love either of those things, but they are using the data only to do things that have been defined as their job to do for a long time now. Th…
I think history has shown enough times, that there needs to be a bigger barrier than, "no evidence currently that this data will be used in ways that differ from the stated reason"
This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccura…
Has anybody studied or quantified the evolution of "effective liberty" over time in the US? Say you buy groceries once per week. That activity might have triggered 1 governmental control touchpoint in 1800 (sales tax?), but in 2020 it might have triggered many more due to increased automation, logging and third-party delegation. All of this, of course, without fundamental changes to the Law of the Land -- simply beca…
Sales taxes weren't a thing then. Before the 20th century government played pretty much no part in the average person's life.
This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccura…
> "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. China's social credit system allegedly assigns (or will assign?) all citizens scores and punishes them for social wrongdoings. The IRS has always been tasked with auditing and catching tax cheats, the Treasury always went after people who violate economic sanctions. What's the similarity other than data collection?
Pretty much everyone in the west gets a credit score the math of which is nebulous and proprietary. It is increased by acting in a desireable manner even if that manner is unhealthy or unproductive for the individual - and a lot of random BS can go into the math that we can't even see.
In the west these things aren't public so it isn't the government grading you - but you still are very much being graded by private corporations. Since we have no idea what they're actually using to grade us we can't confidently say they aren't using any "social misbehavior" we'd find offensive.
If these programs were run by the government we could file FOIA requests - but with private organizations we're S.O.L.
Your credit score is run before you can buy a house or rent an apartment. We are already there.
The difference between a credit score and a social credit score system is one is based on debt payment history and the other based on political dissent & debt payment. Currently saying "Lets Go Brandon" doesn't drop your credit score, in China you may lose quite a few points for posting that pesky bear that likes honey.
Having an arrest on your record is enough to bar your from job and housing, even if charges were dropped or you were found not guilty. That alone is enough of a chilling effect to affect behavior: for example, staying away from protests or not questioning a police officer.