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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.
That's what this bullshit sounds like: a bad parent, who never forgets anything bad their kid did, continually reminds them, and always suspects them before anyone else when something bad happens, always believes the so-called 'good kid'. 'Guilty until proven innocent'. You may as well just kill these people, it would be less cruel.
"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
1. There is no concept in modern America of "did the time, paid for the crime" with regard to social attitudes and how ex-felons can be treated.
2. Say something "offensive" in public and watch a wild-eyed mob that makes a witch-burning look tame come after and try to make sure there is "no place in society" for you.
3. Now corporations are getting in on the act with Chase locking accounts because the person was a Badthinker(tm).
You're either being sarcastic or overlooking the current Muslim detention camps:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china-forced-labor-camps-uighurs.html
Normally I'm all for bashing China, but
Social credit offenses range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs.
Seeing how we use actual prison for #1 and #3, and are working on it for #2, maybe they aren't as harsh as they sound with this ...
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.
China is fast approaching the level of control that Orwell's 1984 describes. We're close to one security camera per citizen. Add total control of Internet, be it fixed or mobile, by the state, as well as total control of social media and payment, and you already have a system that is virtually impossible to escape from.
I am not fucking putting foot in the Peple's Republic of China. It jsut isn't happening.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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
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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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