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Hebei, a Northern Chinese Province, Unveils an App That Triggers a Notification When You're Near Someone in Debt (standard.co.uk)
China is gearing up to launch a social credit system in 2020, giving all citizens an identity number that will be linked to a permanent record. Like a financial score, everything from paying back loans to behaviour on public transport will be included. One aspect of this social credit system is a new app in the northern province of Hebei. From a report: According to the state-run newspaper China Daily, the Hebei-based app will alert people if there are in 500 metres of someone in debt. It's like being on Oxford Street and being able to work out everyone around you who was in debt. According to the financial charity, the Money Charity, the average UK household debt (including mortgages) was $76,000, in June last year. That's a lot of notifications.
"You are within zero meters of someone in debt..."
Notification tone...
"You are within zero meters of someone in debt..."
Notification tone...
"You are within zero meters of someone in debt..."
[Throws phone off bridge]
Fading notification tone...
"You are within thirty meters of someone in..."
Communist Party of China is not afraid of massive scale social experiments of this kind. However, consequences of this are unpredictable. The CCP expects orderly society that could be easily subdued on individual level. This is one possible outcome (i.e. 1984). However, it is one of many possible situations. Humans are not designed to conform 100% of the time, and even Pope at some point watched porn.
I am hoping China taking a leap forward so the rest of us could watch from distance. However, last time they tried Social Engineering on a massive scale (i.e. Great Leap Forward) it didn't end well.
Something tells me the way society operates is hard-coded to a large degree, and trying to patch any of it drastically has a great chance to cause kernel panic.
So, any thieves can and will use it to find people who *aren't* in debt, and mug or burgle them, since they'll have more money.
My friend, if furries have a direct and measurable impact on your life, that's far more on you than them.
Why is debt necessarily shameful? Sometimes, it's better to risk the banksters' money than your own.
Unclean! Unclean!
You don't need an app to alert you. In the U.S., the peasants will gladly make the identifying noise themselves when they tell you all about their art degree.
Or The Orville's "Majority Rule" https://orville.fandom.com/wik...
China has seemingly made a policy of enforcing social shaming and isolation by using surveillance to make the effects transmissible by proximity, i.e. you go to a place undesirables live or hang out, or talk to or even sell things to undesirables, you become an undesirable yourself. Some reports suggest that this policy has been used to great effect in Xinjiang, leading to a situation where the population is so afraid of being blacklisted they will shun anyone they even think might be out of the government's favor. I suspect there is a similar aim with this, and that its true purpose is not to you know you are around debtors, but to remind you that the government knows you are around debtors. Hang out with them too much and your own credit may start to go down.
But it's only about $2500 to renounce one's citizenship, and nothing else due for net worth under $600k or so. So renouncing one's citizenship has a positive return on investment for many people.
While I get where you are coming from, such as no more US tax on all income, you can still face a tax liability upon exits. Further complicating the issue is if you've been a dual citizen by birth but never paid US taxes because yo never lived in the US or only recently found out you are a dual citizen; you could face tax compliance issues. Finally, returning to the US can be more difficult as yo uno longer are a citizen and thus must meet visa requirements, etc.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The rich are more than happy to take VC money. Debt. They're more than happy to buy commercial real estate on credit and declare bankruptcy if it doesn't work out. Debt. Fear and stigma about debt are very much middle-class, petty bourgois feelings.
Are you talking about China, or in the rest of Western nations? See, in China, the state massively builds residential space (including entire ghost cities) that they artificially restrict what's on the market so as to not deflate prices. Artificial scarcity is exceedingly effective at generating maximum revenue, and still having enough inventory left to hold a large market share. But when the government calls the shots, no one else is available to blink.
Life is not for the lazy.
You seem to forget that a major part of home pricing is the availability of mortgage. When most people can't afford to pay 200.000 in whatever currency outright, homes in that place aren't priced that high.
Which is why it's "financially not foolish" to put most of the nation into debt. You increase the size of economy via home price inflation, and you ensure that your population is severely punished for ineffective economic status by loss of their home. It's a massive stick for the population and massive carrot for elites.
Which is in large part why it's not done in most of the world. Most of the world isn't stable enough to the point where elites can count on population not rising up and fucking them to death with bayonettes when things go south in the economy. When people don't lose their homes just because elites made some bad financial bets, they're a lot less violent, because they retain that thing which is cross culturally considered one of the most precious things one has, their own home. Rising up against elites would risk losing that in places where people own their homes, rather than just lease them from banks as long as they can make payments.
It's a harsh risk:reward calculus, and in many places in the world, the risk massively outweighs the reward.
China makes for a great example of economy transiting from one state to the other. Their elites are utterly horrified of their own populace going on long marches. Not only because said elites got their own jobs by doing just that, but because they know just how unstable system becomes when sufficient amount of population is deeply in debt to banks. A state into which city dwellers of China are increasingly pushed into.
I hope they find a loophole where social credit can be bought, sold, leased...then you can have derivatives, then you can speculate on a person, a group, a whole region of people. That would make The Chicago Merc look tame.
Why is debt necessarily shameful? Sometimes, it's better to risk the banksters' money than your own.
That indicates impatience, and a willingness to take what you have not yet earned.
Open heart surgery put me $160k in debt, and it was not impatience so much as urgency to remain living.
But you are damn right I was willing to take what I had not yet earned. I would still have taken it even if I knew for certain there was no possible way I ever would have earned it. No question about it.
As well as indicates a certain lack of ingenuity because why didn't you find actions directly solve your problem instead of resorting the last ditch efforts like economics.
Because lacking $160,000 in my pocket, all other options would have resulted in my death.
Not being dead was the very problem I was wanting to avoid.
Generally taken as an indicator that a person is not wise enough to self sacrifice.
So my wisdom is now in question because I didn't self sacrifice my very life?
And not practical enough 2 find alternative Solutions to their problem.
So let's hear those alternatives solutions, I'm all ears.
In our culture debt symbolizes all that, accurate or no, that is the impression people are getting.
Perhaps some people, but all of the people in my life and most important to me all of the people that mean something to me do not seem to hold me to the impression you seem to have already made of me.
Not only was that entire debt paid in full in just a short couple years (a number of years ago now), but I am also alive, still working and contributing to society, and perhaps maybe even enriching other peoples lives by being a positive force in them.