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We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

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Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#251

Post by hax0ron3 »

treyd wrote: post #242
hax0ron3 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but ICE is not deporting, denaturalizing, or imprisoning US citizens for their political opinions, and I would have very little to no fear about going to Washington DC right now, standing up on a podium, and yelling that Trump sucks while there are 100 National Guardsmen across the street from me. This is very different from what things are like in places like Russia.

See Mahmoud Khalil's case. They're trying to and would continue to have done so if they weren't blocked. What is there stopping them from changing the rules and doing it again?

I disagree with what has been done in the Mahmoud Khalil matter. But it is a far distance between that on the one hand and what happens in places like Russia on the other.

I'm not trying to minimize the dangers of Trump. My point is that there is a huge difference in the level of authoritarianism between today's US and what I consider to be actual authoritarian countries. Today's US is one of the freest countries on the entire planet. We should keep it that way. I don't see what good it does to act as if today's US is anywhere close to actual authoritarian countries.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#252

Post by mattnewton »

danny_codes wrote: post #186
mattnewton wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless you’re some kind of minority, politically active, or in legal trouble, day-to-day life is mostly similar to life in the west Okay but that is exactly why I would prefer a western liberal government. It is better and that is ideal is worth criticizing authoritarians for, and fighting to keep in the west.

I mean I live in the US and people are getting persecuted right now for being a minority, being politically active, or being in legal trouble. So not seeing a huge difference between liberal democracies and authoritarians.

Yes, because we’re sliding into authoritarianism and we need to criticize and correct course

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#253

Post by corimaith »

anigbrowl wrote: post #241
corimaith wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point of extrapolating from second-order/third-order effects, what dosen't count as "social credit" to you? It seems that if society dosen't give everything you want, that's seen as coercion. The actual distinction here is between positive/negative rights. In OP's case, it's if even if you do have the money to do X thing, you are artifically not allowed to do so. That's a violation of negative rights. In your…

In your case, you're positing that if you couldn't afford it anyways, it's "social credit" if private lenders don't give you help because you have a history of not paying loans back. Please read it again. It was hypothesized that you could have a hard time getting a college loan if your parents had bad credit. Now, you could construct an argument for why that policy makes sense for credit issuers, such as 'statistics…

>But the underlying objection was that you shouldn't need to go into debt to get access to higher education in the first place, ie college should not be insanely expensive and you should be able to manage the academic and financial demands with a part time job.

But we're conflating social credit with credit scores are we? A highly contentious normative claim has little to do with OP's argument and is obviously not a basis for a rebuttal for distinctiying the two systems. Which I would imagine there is a certain intentionality in reaching for highly contrived arguments based on literal hypotheticals rather than accurate description of reality.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#254

Post by corimaith »

timeon wrote: post #235
gowld wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating "social credit score", which hasn't been built out in China (although blacklisting, imprisonment, and torture for wrongthink has been built out), with "financial credit score" which exists in USA via private companies working togther, and "credit reports" which exist in both USA and China. China's is run by the unelected, dictatorial government.

In US they have just one more party than in China. Also 1 person is not automatically 1 vote.

So you believe there is no difference between what Trump is doing today and what Kamala/Biden might have been doing?

Democracy is about balancing different interests. So yeah, it is hard when the change you want isn't neccessairly what others believe in. You do need to compromise with other groups. Which means that large, coaliation parties that emerge will naturally regress to the mean. But ironically, that also is the suremost sign of plurality that things very much are different from authoritarianism where it pretty is just one interest group trampling over all the others. Well, some here might prefer that, but they are almost definetly not going to be the ones in charge.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#255

Post by ahartmetz »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #92

The issue is that American media/discourse paints a very distorted view of what life under authoritarian rule is like. The truth is in many countries, unless you’re some kind of minority, politically active, or in legal trouble, day-to-day life is mostly similar to life in the west. But people don’t want to hear that, because we want to feel better than them. Like we wouldn’t tolerate that kind of life. Of course the…

Yes. I've been to China, daily life for regular people is mostly fine (bad work-life balance notwithstanding, as in other Asian countries). Nothing like the old stories from Russia (written by Russians, mind you) or even the relative material comfort but heavy-handed state control like in the GDR.

Daily life can also be fine in fascism if you don't belong to any "unpopular" groups and don't care about any. Until the customary war starts, that is...

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#256

Post by jongjong »

This is a great article. It reminds me of a discussion I had about Russia; in Russia (and China) you are essentially told what you are not allowed to discuss freely... In the west, you are told that you can discuss anything but, in reality, the consequences for discussing certain topics are significant... You only find out once you start using your so-called 'free speech'. In the west, 'free-speech' isn't free at all; it's actually very expensive... It's a cost that's increasingly difficult for honest people to avoid; you have to kind of guess where the boundaries are... While the circle of permissible speech keeps shrinking. The circle has shrunk to a point where a lot of honest topics find themselves outside of the circle.

It's difficult to be an intelligent, honest person in the west because of this.

It's like most people don't understand reality. Everything they believe just happens to fit within the circle of allowed beliefs. They are in alignment with the system and benefiting from it (often unwittingly). It's only when the circle of allowed beliefs shrinks that they start to notice what I described above.

I suspect a lot of people were 'awakened' after the most recent Israel/Palestine conflict because that shrunk the circle of allowed topics a lot. A lot of the people who were morally aligned with the ESG agenda before now found themselves partly outside the circle and you could see the agenda shift. Terms like 'diversity' which were originally conceived primarily as racial and gender-based started to drift towards 'neuro-diversity' as a response to the discomfort created by the shrinking circle having shrunk a little too fast...

If you're outside the circle, you can see it much more clearly. The worst part is that you didn't even get to choose your fate. Kind of ironic as the west prides itself on individual choice. The circle shrinks slowly until you suddenly find yourself caught well outside of it when the consequences have accumulated beyond a certain threshold.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#257

Post by bialpio »

otterley wrote: post #194
wvenable wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen with these large services like Google is that once they deem you undesirable (either on purpose or by accident) then they're just done with you forever. They have so many customers and so many bad actors that it's just not worth it to give anyone a second chance. It's pretty horrible for people caught in that situation. We would need some kind of legislation around this. No company is looking to decay…

What's the tangible financial impact to someone who's been deemed undesirable by Google? Bear in mind that you can mitigate a lot of risk by operating as a business instead of establishing a relationship in an individual capacity. And people, much like businesses, need disaster recovery plans. We advise people to have escape plans from their homes; similarly, they should have escape plans for their critical informati…

> What's the tangible financial impact to someone who's been deemed undesirable by Google?

Depends how deep you got. I for one would lose access to my mobile phone (Google Fi) and email, so it would be very hard for me to get access to anything that uses my phone number for 2FA. Or the email address for any kind of account recovery. Huge nuisance but maybe no financial consequences, except maybe an involuntary trip to the bank's branch to access the account.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#258

Post by hammock »

bluedevilzn wrote: post #226

I moved from Canada to California for a new job with a mid six figure salary. I had a very difficult time finding a place to rent as I had no credit score. Only places that were available without credit score was a room to share. That was not an option with a cat, wife and kids. Finally, I found a place that was willing to accept the entire year's rent up front. Moving such a large amount of money from Canada to US h…

> We already live in social credit but I fear the ones maintained by companies might be better for the consumer.

Seems to me to be dependent on how the incentives line up.

A credit bureau WANTS you to part with any money you might have for a car. So it works out when they control the issuance of your loan.

But would you want the NRA to control the social credit system regulating a firearm purchase?

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#259

Post by krapp »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #251
treyd wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See Mahmoud Khalil's case. They're trying to and would continue to have done so if they weren't blocked. What is there stopping them from changing the rules and doing it again?

I disagree with what has been done in the Mahmoud Khalil matter. But it is a far distance between that on the one hand and what happens in places like Russia on the other. I'm not trying to minimize the dangers of Trump. My point is that there is a huge difference in the level of authoritarianism between today's US and what I consider to be actual authoritarian countries. Today's US is one of the freest countries on…

The distance is closing, it's already closer than many Americans would have considered possible. How close does it need to get before we should be concerned?

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#260

Post by treyd »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #251
treyd wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See Mahmoud Khalil's case. They're trying to and would continue to have done so if they weren't blocked. What is there stopping them from changing the rules and doing it again?

I disagree with what has been done in the Mahmoud Khalil matter. But it is a far distance between that on the one hand and what happens in places like Russia on the other. I'm not trying to minimize the dangers of Trump. My point is that there is a huge difference in the level of authoritarianism between today's US and what I consider to be actual authoritarian countries. Today's US is one of the freest countries on…

Have you decided what your personal red line is after which you would conclude that we've entered an authoritarian regime? Have we crossed the neofascist Rubicon yet? [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YFdwfNh5vs

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