I started working in electronics in the late 1970's and as a "drug criminal" at the time, it became obvious to me that I was working on building my own handcuffs. I guess I really lacked vision because I didn't see this coming.
China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
181–190 of 602 posts
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#182To me the principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted” sounds like the beginning of a new caste system. Everyone's children are going to make mistakes. The wealthy are going to be able to cover up their children's mistakes, the poor are going to be put on 'the list' and become 'restricted.' The restrictions will grow, and eventually you'll have a new group of 'untouchables'
Here are the original NDRC documents being reported here: http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201803/t20180316_879653.html for air travel http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201803/t20180316_879654.html for train travel and Chinese news summary: http://www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/201803/16/t20180316_28505546... Use Google translate to check if this is being misreported. In China you are "bad credit" if you refuse to pay despite a court…
So this is really just like communal imprisonment vs jail in other societies
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why highlight “black people”? Do white people convicted of crimes not carry a stigma? Hispanics? Notwithstanding the qualifier, I think the difference between criminal records and social credit is the system itself. While flawed at least the (US) court system provide certain safeguards: due process, equal protection, right to remain silent, right to confront accusers, right to a lawyer even if you can’t afford one, e…
because if black people get accused of a crime, most people believe they actually committed it. If an upper-middle class blonde hair, blue eyed woman gets accused of a crime, a higher degree of people would at least give her the benefit of the doubt
> If an upper-middle class blonde hair, blue eyed woman gets accused of a crime, a higher degree of people would at least give her the benefit of the doubt
Which would make sense, no? They're playing the odds. It's exceedingly rare for any upper-middle class woman to commit a crime. So to be surprised by that is understandable. Take color and class out of it, you need only compare "man accused of crime" vs "woman accused of crime". More will give the woman benefit of the doubt, and they're more likely to be correct than giving the man the benefit of the doubt.
But to be clear, of course anyone accused of a crime should go through the exact same legal process as anyone else. Justice should be blind and operate on the facts of the case. You can't just make assumptions or play the odds in court, obviously.
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#184To me the principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted” sounds like the beginning of a new caste system. Everyone's children are going to make mistakes. The wealthy are going to be able to cover up their children's mistakes, the poor are going to be put on 'the list' and become 'restricted.' The restrictions will grow, and eventually you'll have a new group of 'untouchables'
I think we are assuming that once you have a low score it becomes impossible to raise the score back to an acceptable level. Caste does not work like that. If you are born into the wrong caste you can't be promoted to a higher one.
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#185The thing that worries me most about the autocracy in China is that all of these Orwellian measures would actually work and then would be pointed out as an example to abandon our civil liberties in favor of a system that may be big brotherly but at least "your kids will always be safe, never be close to any bad person" (By We I'm referring to Democracies). It may also be a uniquely Chinese thing too though. China has…
China doesn’t have a very powerful central state, local governments have lots of power and often act out of sight from Beijing. This actually leads to more abuses of the system, however.
More decentralization leads to more abuses, yes -- but they tend to be of lower magnitude per event. Positions of power tend to attract abusers. Human nature seems to favor consolidation of hierarchies. China is just on a different part of the power cycle than the US.
We're at the egalitarian everyone-is-the-same period of the cycle, and people abuse this state of affairs via a variety of ways.
China is at the we-must-stymie-abusers stage, and abusers use that to abuse and stymie innocent people.
Notice how both systems fail to stop abuse, they just move the dial between magnitude and frequency? What allows abuse is bad actors cloaking their activities behind the information asynchrony of a system. Transparency and holding leadership to account seems to be the best way to slow down the corruption of any system.
That's why it should be easier for Americans indict police officers, and harder for a Chinese PM term limits. Those aren't the only issues in either country, but they should be pretty obviously problems to most people.
It's interesting how every wedge issue seems to follow the same pattern. Take a binary choice that society should probably make -- and draw your trench diagonally from top left to bottom right so that both sides make both decisions just in different magnitudes. Leaves people angry, ideologically confused and nothing is ever resolved.
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like how in Nosedive, nobody is ever having fun. I mean, guests at the party (spoiler) should be amused at the ghost of the maid and the scandal, filming it and all - especially young guys. It should go completely viral. Instead they stand frowning as if they're 70 - to avoid hurting their score. Under social credit society, everybody will be forced to act like they're at the end of their life path.
The interesting thing and probably the point of the episode is that that's already what's happening in social media right now if you want to keep your followers.
I don't know what kind of people friend boring self-promoters. The problem here, there's not enough eyeballs. They end up friending each other and then pretending they have a huge crowd.
And then there's real content, viral content, assertive content. In short, life. Social credit system fights life because life doesn't follow rules, life doesn't care about likes and life doesn't climb their ladder. So naturally I expect harsh sanctions for anything viral or any unexpected flash mobs in such systems.
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#187Is it already being used to suppress criticism of the government and CPC, or is it planned for next month?
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CCP is not interested in progress, its interested in maintaining permanent, absolute power at any cost.
That's not really true. Progress and upward economic development increase the faith of the public and the Communist Party rank-and-file in the Communist Party leadership. The Communist Party leadership has a strong incentive to promote growth.
I think that it is really true. The CCP's implicit bargain is that it delivers perpetually increasing growth and economic prosperity to the average person (compared to last year), and the average person keeps their mouth shut.
That bargain breaks down when growth stops accelerating, and obviously you can't have accelerating growth forever. The CCP's real overarching goal is to "maintain social stability," and that is exactly as dystopian as it sounds, if not more so.
And stifling discussion is a big part of that; this sort of comment would definitely ding your 'score'.
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#189To be fair we ban people with felony convictions from huge swathes of jobs, formally or informally, even if the crime happened decades ago. Also, good luck finding a place to live legally if you've been convicted of a sex crime.
We ban them after due process procedures are complete - which often involves knowing your accused crime and accuser, lengthy evidence gathering, and impartial trials. As I understand the Chinese social capital system, there is no due process, you may not even know if you've been cited for anything until the punishment comes, and violations are identified without appeal.
What use is due process if everybody is guilty of some crime? Have you ever changed a URL parameter against a ToS? Felony computer hacking!
Re: China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
#190China has been working on this for a while, and barring people from transportation is not the scary bit. That's last-century scary. No, it's the emergence of a new sort of ideological warfare making use of the recent knowledge developed in gaming industry that is the scary bit. This is a new kind of threat, something we as humans haven't learned how to deal with.
Here's some analysis from a game designer from 2015: https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI