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

thenexus.media

281–290 of 727 posts

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

#281

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…

Holy moly the US is kafkaesque. Gee. Duly noted. I might be in your position one day in the far future. Will prep for it. Thanks :)

> Holy moly the US is kafkaesque.

Not really. Try to rent an apartment in Germany (any EU country really).

Canada / USA is a breeze in comparison.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always move to new town and start again. The problem with all these social credit systems is that they're designed to follow you wherever you go forever. There is also zero recourse if a mistake was made; at least you can try and smooth things over with a bartender.

Yeah, automation and information sharing prevents people slipping through the cracks, and that also prevents leniency, diversity, and reason. I was musing over something, though. We have creeping Orwellian things like face recognition and the policing of chat histories. But some of this is private, as in, not done by the state. Even when done by the state, it isn't in most places to prop up the regime and prevent dis…

The watchmen in pieces by david rosen and aaron santesso is the book you want to reach.

Total Surveillance but fractional. We live in a society but people only see parts of the whole. No one has all the interactions

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

#283
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only about 6% of Americans have felony records as of 2023.

That's a lot, about 2025 million people! And while many felons deserve their prison terms, those who have been released have an extremely steep hill to climb to get functional in society again. I feel like there's probably some correlation with recidivism rates.

That should be 20-25, not 2025.

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was US ever a liberal democracy? People had much less liberties in the 1950s than today, Your question deserves an answer. The US was a liberal (post-Enlightenment) democracy. Senator McCarthy was eventually kicked out of Congress for his witch hunt. President Nixon was confronted by Republican members of Congress, and he resigned after this meeting rather than face impeachment. So when I was a kid, lawmakers large…

> So when I was a kid, lawmakers largely upheld the norms, the rule of law Only when McCarthy and those policies got unpopular, they let him do it as long as he was popular. So we will likely see the same with Trump, as long as he doesn't make as grave overreaches as they did back then likely nobody will do anything to him. That isn't rule of law, that is rule of personality.

Or popularity rather.

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

#286

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…

Your credit score IS maintained by companies! Their whole business is maintaining American credit scores. I really have no idea what their business model is.

Near instantaneous credit checks is their business model, and they operate worldwide.

Their business replies on collecting and storing vast troves of data that influence your credit score.

Were the likes of Experian and Equifax taken out of the credit system, you would see a massive credit crunch as every business that relies on them would have to manually verify anyone's credit score (which could introduce a whole new set of biases) or forego that completely.

Interestingly, when it comes to business credit checks, i.e. Financial viability and director background checks and history - this is something an LLM could very easily find red flags from publicly accessible data before forking out money for a full report.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when I was a kid, lawmakers largely upheld the norms, the rule of law Only when McCarthy and those policies got unpopular, they let him do it as long as he was popular. So we will likely see the same with Trump, as long as he doesn't make as grave overreaches as they did back then likely nobody will do anything to him. That isn't rule of law, that is rule of personality.

Or popularity rather.

Yeah, so not exactly liberal democracy. It is a democracy, but doesn't seem very liberal if the checks and balances doesn't work against popular policies.

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, there's no increase in disorder, crime in most developed countries is trending down, but we do have a bunch of people that have collected unimaginable wealth and are definitely afraid something will happen to them like the last couple times this has happened. They definitely don't want to repeat history and will use the coercion tools they have to clamp down on the peasants.

> afraid something will happen to them Because of what, the decrease in crime?

Because more people are waking up to the fact that the entire system is rigged against them.

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

#290

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…

You’re being dismissive about the minority part. I guess it varies from country to country but several minority groups combined can actually be the majority like in Iraq, Rwanda, Eastern Europe, SE Asia etc.
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