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People Changing Jobs Too Often Could Be Punished by China's Social Credit System (abacusnews.com)
Lots of things can hurt your social credit in China. Failing to repay your debts, plagiarizing academic articles and building a debt-laden tech empire and then fleeing to another country, to name a few random examples. One province now wants to add another "discredited behavior" that seems much more harmless: Switching jobs too often. From a report: Zhejiang is pushing to build a local social credit system that will, among other things, deem residents a "discredited" person if they move from job to job too frequently, according to a local TV report. "If someone keeps quitting and landing new jobs, his social credit will definitely be a problem," Zhejiang official Ge Pingan said at a local forum, addressing a complaint from one company's human resources department about being unable to do anything when employees want to leave. Ge didn't specify how "frequently" is too frequent, but he said the upcoming system will put restrictions on both companies and individual workers.
"If someone keeps quitting and landing new jobs, his social credit will definitely be a problem," Zhejiang official Ge Pingan said at a local forum, addressing a complaint from one company's human resources department about being unable to do anything when employees want to leave.
This is a really sick viewpoint, although in this case there isn't much cultural difference between the east and west. Plenty of business owners in the US would love to have ways to keep employees other than providing a good work experience and fair pay.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
An interesting aspect of this social credit thing is that each step mirrors things that already exist today... it's well understood that changing jobs too often looks bad on a resume. Or at least, it did before lots of people started doing that, don't even know if it's that bad these days...
That's the bad thing about a system like social credit codifying rules, is that the rules that affect your score probably change a lot more slowly than socially accepted behavior. I wonder what happens when you try to trap the unwritten morals of a society in amber at one point in time, never to change again (or to change so slowly it's essentially the case). Will that bottle up repression in the people? Or create a kind of mindless utopia that lasts forever? So far, nothing has lasted forever... or even close.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Every article that I read on this is propagandized to hell and back. Here's a thread from a journalist who has actually read through the stuff. People who owe tons of back taxes might be forced to buy regular plane/train tickets instead of first class. The horror... The horror...
https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/975536363364696064?lang=en
Punish people for doing things we don't agree with!
How much more "progressive" can you get?
If the US is fully committed to capitalism and the methods of the authoritarian Chinese government proves to be the most profitable for corporate/government stakeholders then it is only a matter of time before the US adopts similar policies.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Depends on what your definition of "too often" is. I mean, pretty much for the past 25-30 years at least, the only real way to increase your salary and position was the change jobs. Sure, you don't want to be doing it every year, but every 2-3 years, sure.
At least if you are a W2 employee.
This is kind of analogous to the marijuana laws in the US, I mean, the polled majority of US citizen want to see it legalized, or at least taken off the Federal Schedule I level, yet, you can't see any real movement yet by Federal congress critters to enact this change.
That's why you have to be ever vigilant and scrutinize every new law, or Federal/State program, because once it is enacted, it is damned hard to ever get rid of it....
Wasn't there like a telephone fee, that was still around linked to the Spanish-American war that was only rescinded like a decade or so ago?
Shit like that just hangs around forever.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
An interesting aspect of this social credit thing is that each step mirrors things that already exist today... it's well understood that changing jobs too often looks bad on a resume. Or at least, it did before lots of people started doing that, don't even know if it's that bad these days...
That's the bad thing about a system like social credit codifying rules, is that the rules that affect your score probably change a lot more slowly than socially accepted behavior. I wonder what happens when you try to trap the unwritten morals of a society in amber at one point in time, never to change again (or to change so slowly it's essentially the case). Will that bottle up repression in the people? Or create a kind of mindless utopia that lasts forever? So far, nothing has lasted forever... or even close.
It is interesting that it kind of writes down what in other societies is unwritten.
There's something to be said for making the rules explicit, anyway. On the flip side, no society functions solely through specified rules.
Big Brother is alive and well over there!
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
From statistics I've read, people in the US are actually staying at jobs longer than they were 25 or more years ago.
However, in the IT/Development world it is different situation.
From what I've heard anecdotally and in job interviews it appears that employers expect people to bounce around.
Some employers almost expect hires to last 1-3 years and then move on.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
As you point out, there already was a "social-credit rule" for this: How people viewed your resume.
Of course, that's a decentralized codification; each individual can make his own decision about how to understand a resume. The problem here is, as always, centralization; the problem is a monopoly.
All you folks rant and rave about the dangers of a monopoly, but you can't seem to perceive that a government is itself a monopoly—the worst kind of monopoly, in fact: One grown through violent imposition rather than voluntary trade.
The problem is government; the problem is violent imposition of The One True Way; the problem is authoritarianism.
Thank you, anonymous coward Chinese troll, for your delightful fake facts.
AP News: "China bars millions from travel for ‘social credit’ offenses". ref
Business Insider: "China has already started punishing people [with low social credit] by restricting their travel. Nine million people with low scores have been blocked from buying tickets for domestic flights, Channel News Asia reported in March, citing official statistics." Ref: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4
Wikipedia: "Travel ban. By the end of 2018, 5.5 million high-speed rail trips and 17.5 million flights had been denied to prospective travellers who were on a blacklist." ref
And the "social credit" system is also used, yes, to enforce politics. Wired: "If solving problems was the real goal, the CCP would not need social credit to do it," she says. "China’s social credit system is a state-driven program designed to do one thing, to uphold and expand the Chinese Communist Party’s power." (Ref: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained
Ya know, it's almost like they watched the "Nosedive" episode of Black Mirror, didn't realize that it was satire, and made an entire national policy out of it.
Tacoma is one of those walking simulator games, but I liked the story. It takes place in the future, and one of the things you can figure out is a bit of context about how jobs work. In the future, companies have introduced their own currency they call "Loyalty" to pay workers. However each company has its own "Loyalty" and it's a lot of trouble to switch companies as you have to exchange your "Loyalty" and you can't always do it all (it sounds like it works like college credit when you switch colleges). This article reminded me of that. I guess we're getting closer to the future.
Really? Who is trying to deplatform those they don't agree with? It isn't the right.
Yes it is.
Incidents at Harvard and Catholic Universities challenge idea that liberals are the only ones preventing ideas from being voiced on campuses.
"The Hosty case is only part of the growing conservative attack on freedom of speech on campus."
Data shows a surprising campus free speech problem: left-wingers being fired for their opinions
Actually, the scariest thing about a social credit system isn't codifying the rules, it's that they are not public. So everyone worries about any given act and self-polices. It's actually too easy to change the rules - well-placed rumors can have people refusing to wear red shirts (the color of Pooh's shirt), or otherwise behaving in cargo-cult ways. Which is great for an authoritarian system bent on control (let the rebels wear their red undershirts as opposed to take on the system!), but horrible for living in the society.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Sure, you don't want to be doing it every year, but every 2-3 years, sure.
Yes, about every 3 years is the sweet spot. This not only maximizes your income, but is good for companies as well. Job hoppers help ideas flow between companies, and enables rapidly growing companies to attract top talent and expand faster.
Productivity is higher in places like Silicon Valley where job hopping is common, urged on by California's ban on non-compete agreements. Jurisdictions with rigid labor markets tend to have stagnant economies, and less innovation.
Churn is good.
...Working in tech field, then you probably have NDAs/claims that you are taking their intellectual property. Failing that, remember when Apple, Adobe, Google, etc. agreed not to hire each other's employees?
Yes, but that was challenged and ruled illegal by the U.S. government. That makes a difference: in the US, the government challenges the anticompetitive "gentleman's agreement". In China, the government enforces it.
https://www.cnet.com/news/appl...
https://www.mintz.com/insights...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They love the word "liberty," but hardly any of the policies they want would increase liberty. They would just replace it with corporate dictatorship.
They would replace our current imperfect freedom with an America of nothing but gated communities with repressive regulations that can't be challenged in court, and corporate malls with repressive regulations that can't be challenged in court.
I wonder what happens when you try to trap the unwritten morals of a society in amber at one point in time, never to change again (or to change so slowly it's essentially the case). Will that bottle up repression in the people?
That already exists. It's called "Religion". And yes, it does pretty much exactly that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
the scariest thing about a social credit system isn't codifying the rules, it's that they are not public.
That is a great point, and if the rules becomes complex enough even the supposed rulers may not understand what the choices being made!!
It's actually too easy to change the rules
This is also a great point - either the rules can be easily shifted without the public reality knowing, or (very probably) selectively applied to some specific individuals (for worse or better, like bribing someone to alter your own score).
It will be really interesting to see how society responds to this strange invisible pressure...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Depends on what your definition of "too often" is
I was thinking about this as well. As you say for a technical profession, changing every 2-3 years seems fine as both sides get benefit.
There are other professions where maybe the reasonable period is longer, or seasonal workers who naturally would change every year. You'd hope they would account for that in this system, but who knows...
One end effect of this would you'd want to be lots more careful changing jobs, because once you started something you'd really be pressured by the system not to leave no matter how much you ended up disliking it.
Also kind of wonder, if they penalize or reward people for trying to change careers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Switching jobs about every two years allows you to maximize your earning potential.
Companies whine about employees not being loyal but they partially created this problem:
* Asymmetrical respect. They can fire you at any time but when YOU want to end the business relationship they expect two weeks.
* no or meaningless rewards for being a loyal, long term employee
* don't offer pay increases comparable to switching to a new job
* idiotic "Human Resources" dept. as if people are resources to be strip-mined instead of treating them as an asset
Getting this back on topic:
China wants to reward bad companies and penalize good people??? Color me surprised. /s
--
Redditard / Slashtard, noun, someone who downvoted a person for asking a question
... it's well understood that changing jobs too often looks bad on a resume.
"Looks bad on a résumé" is a far cry from "prevents you from having a bank account or traveling to other countries and taints not just you but your family, friends, and associates as well".
The problem is not some nebulous concept of "social credit" as a way to quantify someone's reputation within a specific context, like a credit score in the context of loans, but rather the fact that this particular form of "social credit" is backed by legal force in a regime which casts various natural human rights as revocable privileges.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Well we finally paid the war off. We're still paying off WW1 and 2, Korea is for our grandkids.
The end-case of this is serfdom. You cannot leave your job without your "noble"'s approval. Sub government for noble in this case.
But their labor practices seem to be in the worst "capitalist" tradition.
Corporatism != Free Market
and the "telephone fee" was a tax-the-rich thing. Remember that whenever any leftist says "we're only going to tax the rich"....
... urged on by California's ban on non-compete agreements.
Quite possibly the only thing CA got right that it hasn't destroyed.
We shouldn't be so worried about China using genetic engineering to produce 'super soldiers', we should be more worried that they'll use it to produce Good Little Robot People who do exactly what they're programmed to do, unerringly, unquestioningly, and never complaining -- even if what they're told to do is fling themselves into an operating woodchipper. That's about what I think of the Chinese government and their complete and total lack of regard for human beings and basic Human Rights. Shit like this and so much more that I've heard and read that comes out of China makes me want to puke. Before I'd allow the rest of the world end up like China, I'd press the Big Red Button myself and blow it all up, it would be a kinder fate than what these assholes have in mind for humanity.
Which party currently has a KKK member as a state gov?
Hint: Its the DNC with Northam.
Which party kept a KKK leader as their Senate leader until he finally died after serving in the Senate for 60 years?
Hint: Its the DNC with Byrd
Were = Are when it comes to the DNC supporting the KKK. In fact one of you liberal bigots, XXongo, just posted a story claiming that gays/women/Jews being censored with violence isn't worth mentioning because they are not real people.
Sorry, but you liberals are the racists ones attacking people who disagree with them. You are the ones calling for high school kids to be thrown into wood chippers because they dared to wear red hats. You are the ones supporting current KKK members.
Easy to stop, but you choose not to.
An interesting aspect of this social credit thing is that each step mirrors things that already exist today... it's well understood that changing jobs too often looks bad on a resume. Or at least, it did before lots of people started doing that, don't even know if it's that bad these days...
That's the bad thing about a system like social credit codifying rules, is that the rules that affect your score probably change a lot more slowly than socially accepted behavior. I wonder what happens when you try to trap the unwritten morals of a society in amber at one point in time, never to change again (or to change so slowly it's essentially the case). Will that bottle up repression in the people? Or create a kind of mindless utopia that lasts forever? So far, nothing has lasted forever... or even close.
There is otherwise nothing wrong with someone wanting to discourage most of the kinds of behaviors that China wants to discourage... What is wrong is using force against people who are simply exercising their human rights.
Most of the behaviors that have been cited are things that in the US and many other countries are simply
discouraged because of social pressures. But ultimately leaving a job, or finding a new place to live or finding new friends is a way to move on and move forward. Having such a regimented system where you can't move beyond every minor mistake or disagreement with someone more powerful than you is going to ultimately create more discord in society.
not with the 1st in place and there lot's of people who will fight to the death if they try to take the 2th away.
Serfs were not slaves. Serfs were people under military protection from bandits, who had by right a row of farmland to work, and if the local farming practices included horse-driven plows, the local Lord was responsible for plowing that row for them. And in return they were required to provide a certain number of days of labor to the Lord, and to the Church. The Church was then also required to use some of that for Sunday Alms. Which in that period meant a bowl of soup and a glass of beer.
Farmers who were not themselves Lords, and who were not Serfs, were unprotected and routinely had their output stolen by bandits. Few commoners had a better life than a Serf.
Serfs can't always leave their job, but that "job" is only few weeks of labor per year. The rest of their time is their own. Retainers get a lot more pay, but they have to do whatever the Lord says at any time, day or night, all year, with no side jobs. If a Serf makes money at a side job, that money is their own. I mean, they better keep it hidden or taxes might get collected, but still.
Corporations are creatures of government; they are protected from repercussions by all manner of laws.
To the contrary. Governments are the only entities that can put limitations on corporations.
Your belief that if there weren't governments, corporations would be benign is... touching, but naïve. They'll suck out your blood and sell it to the highest bidder if they can.
> Yes, but the U.S. does not have a government-operated "social credit system" that allows business
> owners to prevent people from traveling, or even from using public transportation, if they switch jobs.
The US system is operated by far-left oligarchs who go after conservatives. Case in point, a conservative who had Uber, Chase Bank, etc, "unperson" her... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Basically, if you don't support socialists like the Dems, you're blacklisted all over the place. Gotta keep your "Socialist Credit" score up.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
lenjoy that total control over the life of their citizens.
Welcome to a totalitarian Communist gov.
Contrast that with the freedom of the real China, Taiwan.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Not long ago I read a book on Vonnegut's writing career (it was mainly a compilation of his short stories) and it turns out he slaved like a bastard to establish himself as a young author. A few elite publications paid big money if you managed to get one of your works printed. Like most aspiring authors, he mostly garnered rejection letters. Unlike most aspiring authors, he read the letters closely, and followed the advice given.
The big piece of advice was to craft a good payoff. O. Henry was famous for crafting his shock miniatures, where the payoff turns on a dime. What a payoff is, exactly, is hard to define, but the editors know it when the see it, an author of the day failing to breast the tape with a suitably photogenic grin or grimace simply wasn't going to punch his big ticket to the big times.
What I just realized here is the cynicism has the tightest payoff structure of all the literate art forms:
* fully committed
* profitable
* only a matter of time.
Bing bang boom BINGO! Payoff delivered. You may now collect your $200 and proceed to troll another thread.
The $64,000 question here is to analyze just what the reader is seeking from the prevailing payoff structure. Why does it feel so damn good to veni, vidi, vici? (I came, I saw, I pressed "like".)
Last night I wrangled for a couple of hours with Rule Makes, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our Minds (2018) by Michele Gelfand.
She's got all the right blurbs: Pinker, Pink, Adam Grant, Dweck, Baumeister (plus one relative non-entity). She's one of the Edge crowd. She's highly recognized. Yet roughly once a page, in the early going, she dropped an adjectival cliche right out of the most wooden business book you've ever read. And worse, she consistently subjects her statistical outliers to all the scrutiny of Brian Wansink. "Yes, it's true that this group doesn't fit the model, but voila! here's another observational post hoc that sweeps the paradox away." Her editor probably told her not to sound too academic—a sometimes dangerous piece of advice that enables an academic of otherwise sound mind and body to toss the statistically sound baby out with the soundbite bathwater.
I think there's a lot here to chew on in her tightness–looseness theory, but her exposition of this in this particular book left some sand attached to the root hairs, and so much of my chewing involves more tongue than teeth.
On page 97 she attributes the tight culture of the U.S. south to their Celtic ancestors of the 1700s, notably their code of gallantry, courage, and suspicion "a combination of characteristics psychologists call 'a culture of honor.' "
So much for the grand cultural melting pot. So much for the wham bam "only a matter of time" payload cynigasm.
The implied payload is that these people are really just in it for the money, and the entire culture of the U.S. south is only so much shallow showmanship (try saying this out loud in the U.S. south).
The implied cynigasm payload is that we don't even need to notice the exceptional cases.
The implied cynigasm payload is that we don't even need to invoke the Wansink soft shoe.
The implied cynigasm payload is that they are shallow, and we are deep.
Such is cognitive magic of cynicism that from within its powerful bubble, one can press "like" to endorse depth, without evoking the least twinge of psychological dissonance.
The correct book title is: Rule Makes, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World
Either I cut and paste from a bad source, or had some cut and paste mishap with the last word, and patched it over in the heat of the moment with the wrong tire.
To all you kids who think Socialism is some great thing, this is why the three generations before you fought so hard against it.
Cybernetic totalitarianism FTW!
Keep repeating that your "credit score" only impacts your ability to get a loan. Maybe if enough people repeat that mantra, it will magically become true!
they are transparent, unlike some fake democracies that are dominated by advertisements and money.