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China Bans 23 Million From Buying Travel Tickets as Part of 'Social Credit' System (theguardian.com)
China blocked 23 million "discredited" travelers from buying plane or train tickets last year as part of the country's controversial "social credit" system aimed at improving the behavior of citizens. From a report: According to the National Public Credit Information Centre's 2018 report, 17.5 million people were banned from buying flights and 5.5 million barred from purchasing high-speed train tickets because of social credit offences. The report released last week said: "Once discredited, limited everywhere." The social credit system aims to incentivize "trustworthy" behavior through penalties as well as rewards. According to a government document about the system dating from 2014, the aim is to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." Social credit offenses range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs.
"allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."
Discredited here includes voicing an opinion against the prevailing totalitarian regime or someone in power. Can you say dystopian.
It's coming here right now. Just look at the deplatforming being done by Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Patreon.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
... people who break the law or don't pay dept are low value and, depending, denied employment, guns, voting rights, incarcerated, evicted, fined, denied credit, denied loans ...
The approach is certainly newsworthy but the outcome is similar.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm absolutely certain this system comes with the all the due process checks and balances necessary to ensure it's not abused by the wealthy and connected to punish those they disagree with.
In fact I'm absolutely sure it come with absolutely no due process whatsoever. Kinda like Guantanamo or the no fly list. This is one those tools the Chinese will use to abuse people who don't fall in line with the communist party or dare criticize the leadership.
There's a huge difference between organizations enforcing their own rules and the government running a system to disenfranchise people.
China must have tremendous confidence in its ability to suppress people to create common cause for 23 million people to hate the system. That big a number must contain a lot of capable people - and no doubt a bunch of mistakes. All of those now have a clear and undeniable focus for their rage and rebellion.
This sounds like a program likely to have unexpected results
If there's no expiration date on the missteps, then the "good kids" can use this to great advantage. It's a great way to build an inflexible caste system (if your goal is to build such a system). Also a good way to convince the bad ones that they might as well *really* be bad because, heck, they've got nothing to lose.
Yea! Let's de-platform nazi's from their phone and cable subscriptions!
Those companies can do what they want since they are private.
Oh, there are rules against that? Well, obviously twitter is different. It's not like social media is where a sizeable amount of people get their information regarding society and politics. Who uses social media to influence their voting pattern?
What is the big deal in allowing big private companies with zero accountability control speech and information.
They're literally putting Uighurs in reeducation camps right now.
Coming to a western democracy near you soon.
The San Francisco Tech Oligopoly are doing their best. Fortunately, they aren't backed by the rule of law (yet) and in the US new alternatives are gradually emerging to allow uncensored political discussion online.
It's a much worse situation in e.g. the UK, where it's now illegal to offend people, and blasphemy laws are routinely enforced (under the label of hate speech). But the UK hasn't fallen off the cliff yet. There was discussion in parliament a while back during the riots about removing benefits for people identified as rioters (most of whom have no practical means of legal survival except a government check). But the discussion didn't go anywhere, and sanity prevailed for now. Still prety close to that cliff edge though.
It's not at all clear that a society can ever recover from a panopticon totalitarianism.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Trotsky-slut progs want the same for the USA. No republican yeoman will tolerate it in the name of mobocracy! What a perfideious combo nibbers/beaners/Schumeresque-Peolosite power-mongers/limo-libs/gaffots/femi-nazis/bleeding-hearts and globalist money-hoes. The entire emotocentric/Stalinist spedctrum of social spew. They need suppression ... seen out in-the-streets ... smash-faced in the alley ... kicked into the gutter ... it's coming Bosco, count on it.
You argue that the companies control the government, but then say it's good that the same companies censor people you dislike, because it's not the government doing it. Your hypocrisy is rich.
Well America does it privately. Credit bureaus to keep track of if you didn't pay back loans, lists of people who were arrested along with a culture of not hiring someone if previously arrested, as you must be a bad person if ever arrested and a really bad person if found or forced to plead guilty. As it is a private decision not to hire, rent housing etc it's considered fine.
Government also gets involved with lists of people not allowed to fly, lists of people not allowed to live in certain places, lists of people not allowed to own firearms and even lists of people not allowed to vote.
These lists usually make sense at first look, eg not allowing sex offenders to live by kids, until you look at all the reasons the government will put you on the sex offenders list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Tibet comes first I guess?
Might also check this:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/...
Clean up your own house before you criticize others. Stop bombing and invading other countries, is that so hard? You're gearing up to overthrow Venezuela while we speak. What the hell is wrong with you people? You go on about how China is so bad, and yet the worst are yourselves.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's 1.66% of China's population. Pointing out that 23 million is a large percentage of the USA population is an absurd attempt at disinformation.
For an equivalent group in the USA, we might look at people whose right to vote (and to hold a lot of jobs) has been revoked due to a previous felony conviction. As of 2016, 2.5% of the USA's voting age population was barred from voting due to a felony -- if you spread that out over the full population, it'd be just a little more than than China's socially discredited group. Considering China imprisons far fewer people, social credit may be seen as an alternative punishment for that population.
(Of course, the entire Chinese population lacks the right to meaningful voting.)
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It is a very bad idea to hire criminals to work for you. It's not some horrible US culture. If it's such a wrong, why don't YOU hire some criminals to work for you? Oh, you won't be doing that? But the rest of us have to expose ourselves to unnecessary risk just so you can feel better about yourself. Gotcha.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Also a good way to convince the bad ones that they might as well *really* be bad because, heck, they've got nothing to lose.
I wonder about this also; if you are in a deep enough hole you may as well keep digging and see if you can reach the other side.
It cannot be good fo society as a whole to bottle up people's movements like this, forcing someone to stay in an area and get angrier and angrier about it... sounds like a really bad idea.
In a way we should all thank the Chinese for going so flat-out on this idea, because a lot of governments are agitating to do similar things but if the Chinese system runs into major issues it will prevent other governments from trying. On the other hand if they iron out the problems by force, and the system appears to work - it could be more likely to spread. :-(
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley