171–180 of 193 posts
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You're missing a glaringly obvious difference. In the west, your credit isn't used by the government to influence your political affiliation so directly.
I remember hearing that if you are applying for a government job with a security clearance, then your finances and credit-worthiness is factor.
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Each of these bullet points is either false or meaningless, which is frustrating because I sort of want to agree with your main point, but I just can't when it's phrased like this. China obviously utilizes currency and a (very) limited free market. There has never been an alignment between wealth and social value, nor should there be. Yes, wealth creates inequality in the United States (in particular) and other more…
"China obviously utilizes currency" - I didn't mean to imply that China doesn't have money, obviously it does, and it functions as a social scoring system there too. "do not keep security risk scores" - As other commenters point out, intelligence agencies use methods like cotraveller analysis and social network analysis which do seem to imply scoring all citizens. I guess they have an interpretation of the law which…
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Like school! And college! The folks that work there, are the ones that did well there. Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas.
> Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas. Just thinking out loud here but what's the alternative? Random allocation of goods/power or random promotion of individuals/companies based on nothing? At least in a meritocracy advancement of an individual/organization is based on some performance measurement - we can of course argue about di…
When the 'norm' is defined as 'just like the rest of us' is when you get into trouble.
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Like school! And college! The folks that work there, are the ones that did well there. Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas.
You would prefer college admissions be based on a blind lottery system? That seems like a great way to destroy an education system. Would degrees then be allocated randomly to people who may or may not have studied? Maybe you’re being sarcastic.
How much time does China left? 10? 20? 40 years? before becoming utterly uncompetitive?
Yes, you can see them growing weaker every day can't you, as they fall further and further behind the US.
> The West has social credit scoring: money ??? as opposed to China which has no money?? China's credit system is paired with dictatorship, censorship, disappearance, and killing. Nowhere near the similarities with West Young Chinese activist missing after sharing plan to wear ‘Xitler’ t-shirt in public https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/03/young-chinese-activist...
There's alot of international people posting on hacker news, and alot of them have anti-US bias. They wish China would be the one that takes over US as the superpower of the world. for those people I have a comment You like posting political views on the internet right? Imagine China is the sole superpower of the world that defeated the democracies of the world. You would be ranked, censored, monitored, caught, jaile…
We've banned this account for using HN for political and national battle, flamewars, and personal attacks. That's a rather striking amount of vandalism, just as it would be if you had the opposite opinions. Indeed, the people who vandalize HN this way have more in common with their extreme enemies than they do with anyone else.
Commentary on China's social credit system so often fails to note the many parallels in western societies. * The West has social credit scoring: money. A key principle of market economies is that accruing money is the just reward for contributing to society. Your bank account is your social credit score - yet we all know that many people get rich without rendering a useful service to society. * Intelligence agencies…
Western intelligence agencies don’t keep risk scores on everyone. Take off the tin foil hat.
Edit: it looks like you've been posting a bunch of ideological-battle-style comments here. Would you please not do that? We ban accounts that use HN primarily for this, but I don't want to ban you because you've posted a bunch of good comments as well.
They can apply this same system to outsiders too as long as they can buy or gather the data. They could then use this inside of countries other than China, where they own increasing numbers of business interests including employers. So this will start affecting behaviors even of non-Chinese people as people anticipate their behavior getting put into the system at some date in the future. Even if the system isn’t in p…
Good point. At some point WeChat, Weibo, et al will want to expand outside of China, and they could apply this system to everyone who uses those platforms. Just imagine, your social media profile on WeChat, your messages on Weibo, your searches on Baidu, your images on Meipai could all feed into your score. Maybe Momo could display and sort dating matches by their score so you don't end up with someone who's undesira…
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Perhaps that is a good thing. There is no argument more convincing than a demonstration. So I'd rather observe this scheme's first failure in China than elsewhere. The rest of the world can learn a lasting lesson in what not to do. And if it succeeds, then I'd be glad to be wrong.
This is not an empirical issue. Without knowing any of the outcomes, we can already say that a government clocking your every move and giving you a rating based on how favorable the government finds your behavior, all without your consent, is an utterly obscene moral evil.
Most people are of the "wait and see" and "you gotta do what you gotta do to survive" mentality. So they "wait" and let events unfold, and survivors in those cascade of events are idealized as morally good.