How Do You Control 1.4 Billion People?

China's social credit system, which becomes mandatory in 2020, aims to funnel all behavior into a credit score.

A few months ago, you accidentally defaulted on a phone bill. The mistake affects your credit score: It’s hard to get a loan. You can no longer make jokes about Marco Rubio on Twitter; such remarks will algorithmically define you as a libertarian loon—another sort of person likely to default on social obligations. After a couple of close friends miss their student loan repayments, you can’t even travel: your social circle is now all “discredited, unable to take a single step.”

This is the incipient scenario in China, whose state-backed “social credit scheme” will become mandatory for all residents by 2020. The quoted text is from a 2014 State Council resolution which promises that every involuntary participant will be rated according to their “commercial sincerity,” “social security,” “trust breaking” and “judicial credibility.”

Some residents welcome it. Decades of political upheaval and endemic corruption has bred widespread mistrust; most still rely on close familial networks (guanxi) to get ahead, rather than public institutions. An endemic lack of trust is corroding society; frequent incidents of “bystander effect”—people refusing to help injured strangers for fear of being held responsible—have become a national embarrassment. Even the most enthusiastic middle-class supporters of the ruling Communist Party (CCP) feel perpetually insecure. “Fraud has become ever more common,” Lian Weiliang, vice chairman of the CCP’s National Development and Reform Commission, recently admitted. “Swindlers must pay a price.”

The solution, apparently, lies in a data-driven system that automatically separates the good, the bad, and the ugly. But with President Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao Zedong, at the helm, much English-language coverage of the plan so far predicts “unprecedented” levels of dictatorial surveillance.

newrepublic.com/article/148121/control-14-billion-people

Attached: df63c527c.jpg (1000x667, 304.83K)

iirc this affects more of the upper middle classes-richfags than the average citizen

tldr: no funny porky business or bye bye credit

This is the only logical solution to capitalist atomisation and alienation.

Under the natural conditions that were upheld all the way in human history until late industrialisation, everyone knew a lot about people they dealt with. Not anymore.

Social credit is a way to uphold this through technology in a modern world. A normal socialist praxis.

Exactly. Liberal outrage about this is ridiculous. I mean, they are not monitoring your personal behavior. You aren't gonna get negative credit if you break up with your girlfriend or whatever. It's just if you are being a fraudulent asshole in business dealings.

Attached: drew scarey.gif (160x120, 1.13M)

...

Ideally, you would - a woman interested in you should be able to check general info on your previous romantic involvement and commitment. And Chinese system certainly does take family life into account.

I wouldn't want to live under this kind of system. But as a real life experiment, I'm curious how it shakes out. I really doubt you can engineer yourself out of the dissolution of common morality cause by capitalism though.

Attached: face of love.jpg (254x281, 7.4K)

So why is it OK for freedom loving America to give all of its citizens a "credit score" but someone is totally evil for China to do something similar? Kind of hypocritical.

If anything, runaway technological progress is human nature. Historically no one considered the consequences of widespread adoption of new technology. Steam engine, computers, etc. they transform society in unexpected ways both positive and negative. So living life at the whims technological progress is the historical nature of humans. Regarding this plan, it is firstly a surveillance system, albeit one with more transparency than the systems in place in the western world. Good luck finding your NSA score. I don't think this will somehow reduce the alienation and atomization of people living in capitalist society. Effective participatory public institutions would do more to foster a sense of community and belonging. However, in China low level state officials go into office with the expectation of profiting by rent extraction from the population. It is little wonder that trust in them is so low. If Xi is actually the most authoritarian leader since Mao, he ought to do a purge of all levels of the CPC and try to attract citizens who have the goal of serving the people to replace the old corrupt cadres. Incentives can be stable pay and much better working conditions that what private sector employers offer in China. Instead, immense labor is allocated to constructing a surveillance system that is at best a bandage on top of the problems brought by capitalism.

Under the doctrine of Scientific Socialism, this policy was trial ran and fine tuned for good 10 years smallscale already.

This is a cover for the AI system that harnesses the power of 200 million chinese grandmas plaing Go every day.

sounds like the "Nosedive" episode of Black mirror tv series

Attached: lead_960_540.jpg (960x540, 137.61K)

why

Really? I would like to know more.

Attached: know more.png (500x281, 210.7K)

Because this is the healthy and natural way of it. You won't have to second guess and be suspicious of your partner, let alone totally insane tinder shitfest. You'd know what you're getting into - as you would in a small city-state or countryside.

What is to know? They set it up in a few small townships, and saw what would happen and what to fix - as uncle Deng taught to implement reforms.

I don't understand how anyone could possibly think this is a good idea. Normal credit scores are already bad enough, some black box algorithm deciding your fate in life seems a great deal worse.

Do you have articles or reports that relate what happened though? That detail the program overseeing this etc.

Wow more propoganda against them damn slant-eyes, It sure feels great to be an enlightened westerner!

See you soon guys, I'm going to the local cafe to discuss socialism with my best buds! Talking about how socialism is when you accept trannies and shit, how drumpf is a doo-doo head and shit. And how much we hate ☭TANKIE☭s!

not an argument

Attached: 919a9a9f628ec937b9f93e860c97572e5f422c65a352f56c25b5db0795e1811b.png (501x445, 204.94K)

It sorta is when your nearest "socialists" are starbucks drinking yuppies

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HA

"funny porky business" will include not buying products from Chinese firms when someone has the money or taking transit instead of buying a car. And, as with actual credit scores, as people get richer they will have a far greater ability to dispute charges or debits made to their accounts. A rich Chinese person could run somebody over then get the charge dismissed because the victim wasn't wearing a hi-vis safety vest while a poor Chinese person would have their score totally wiped out.

Same applies to scams. Poor people will have their accounts shredded if they engage in petty check fraud or are caught with non-Chinese money while rich people will have scams wrapped into bureaucratic nonsense that insulates them from being targeted directly. And of course police will get exceptions for anything and everything, becoming virtually impossible to depose as it is in the west.

The natural conditions of human history did not allow a centralized bureaucracy to know anything about people outside a 10ish mile radius. This system is the modern equivalent of a punchcard or credit card database, but with more sources of input than mere hours worked or charges. It is technocratic capitalist fascism to the core.

At the most basic point, a socialist system has no need to grade people because all people are equal. This is why true socialism cannot exist with money or currency, which is a much simplier form of social credit (people with more money = more leverage in society, ditto for social credit). This entire system goes everything against socialism has ever stood for and only exists to perpetuate people with the highest scores, the bourgeoisie.


Completely fucking wrong. Someone who breaks up with their girlfriend has tax implications since they won't be getting into a family unit that will provide the state with future consumers and economic growth. Already in the west there are tax incentives taken away if someone gets a divorce or looses custody of their children, China has experience with this through their one child policy. Someone who has multiple partners is a huge liability for the state because it means they can't be trusted and aren't making well adjusted children/consumers.


wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Go to the .cn site and actually read what it is, it's meant to track someone's daily activities to ensure they are being good citizens. In particular this is being done to keep "bad actors" out of "good" areas. The model example are litterers and pot smokers kept from using airplanes or high-speed trains. Sound familiar? It's the same bullshit rich people promote in the west but through different methods, including now defunct racial segregation.

Like which ones user

Historically: racial segregation. Railroad companies in particular wanted to keep nonwhites out of their service or consigned to their own special car because they were percived as being dirty and more importantly had little credit because they were poor. Plessy v. Ferguson enshrined this into law until Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Even then, many places still did not desegregate because nonwhites were considered to be poor (low credit) and dirty, which led to the Freedom Riders and then the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Additionally, during that time race factored into credit scores too. Nonwhites simply had lower scores because they were not white and therefore not to be trusted as much as a comparable white. This distinction, made by licensed doctors (in the same way modern ones diagnose mental illness), was used to oppress working nonwhites.

In modern times: e-payments. New transit networks made in the past ten years usually embrace e-ticketing explicitly as a way to keep people with low social status off their service. Most notable is the SMART train in Santa Rosa, California which does not have any options for paper tickets. All ticketing must be done through a plastic card or monthly pass. As a direct result of this only people with valid mailing addresses (homes or PO boxes) and credit scores high enough to obtain a credit card can ride. It is explicitly used to keep the poor and homeless out because they are considered of little value.

Which is what a "credit" system does, run by the state or not it assigns someone a value. That value is what creates classes and what creates capitalism, as people compete to increase their value and only exist around similarly high-value people. This is a basic staple of capitalism.

My only question is when this system gets rolled out to the rest of the world what will we do? Drop out and live inawoods?

Attached: 6e684d001a894fcbcdde4dc36a8c00082907e77845c7b881bd412c7cfd153ff4.png (368x367, 322.61K)