Of course the most frustrating part about that is as the US and other western countries start sliding into authoritarianism, people deny it because they don’t feel like it’s authoritarian.
Edit: To clarify, I don’t think life is exactly the same - just that the consequences of authoritarianism are much more insidious than they’re portrayed.
You go shopping, go to work, see friends, have a few beers or maybe a smoke, eat out, go to weddings, birthdays and funerals, play sports. People run businesses, post memes.
The way non-OECD, "non-democratic" countries are portrayed in the West gives us a very false sense of superiority.
We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption.
I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum. There's just more similarities between countries than differences, in my experience. The things that often distinguish are more cultural and geographical than political.
I have met people who have fled autocratic countries. Life sure looks ok there from a surface level. Unless of course you are from the extended family of someone who displeased someone better connected. Or you are in the way of someone. Or you happen to have said something which displeased someone. Then life is not ok at all and there is approximately nothing you can do about it.
Of course everyone there knows that’s how it works. That’s why everyone there shuts up and lower their head because they don’t want to be the idiot having a run up with the power that be.
This is a wild take, unless you mean that in thw sense of wake up, eat, work and sleep kind of way.
If I call the prime minister a criminal liar - worst that will happen is I get a defamation lawsuit. In authoritarian countries I go to a prison camp, and the neighbors are the one to report me. Even if I'm not political - if step on toes of people in party I can disappear and the rest will know not to ask questions.
That's the point. You have the same type of problems everywhere, but not the same quantity and quality. But people seem to not care or understand those differences, and weaponize the concepts, instead of looking at the outcome.
> We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption.
and if we wanted to give ANY society a geometric representation it would have a point at the very top that would represent the most powerfull person, and would then widen out to represent the average and then taper down to another singal point, that would represent the single person in that society whoes life was composed of nothing but horror not of thier own fault and who will die with no chance of any help or redress. We can name those living at the top, but pretend that the wieght of society is not carried by a succesion of nameless inocents , comunist, socialist, religious and other societies give lip service to this, but all fall short of declaring a policy that no one will ever be ignored, forgotten and abandoned, but each and everyone of these systems has an elaborote way of doing reputation management or credit score, merit, titles,etc to signal virtue/worth, that can be gamed, so it is. And here we are, and my time/attention must now, be diverted back to the game, lest I loose more than the few points of carma it costs me to speak out here.
Why such drama with many words, when all can be summed up with that. Yet somehow, people consider life much better on one side of the spectrum, while other side is considered utter shit. So much that many people are risking their lives, and some are dying just to 'move across spectrum'. It may be a hard concept to grok for typical western kids who often struggle with finding noble worthy hard-to-achieve goals in their lives, who got good life served at literal plate without moving a finger, but trust me its damn real.
I've grown up during communism, in country heavily oppressed by soviet russia and littered with many of their military bases, ready for that WWIII battles that never came. Not 'spent some time someplace so I am an expert', my whole identity was only that and nothing else.
Yes we all need to go shopping, its just that my parents couldn't buy any fresh vegetables nor fruits for their son, who suffered mild malnutrition due to that. And sometimes the shelves were empty or full of one type of canned sardines (I mean whole supermarket, nothing else, beauty of constantly failing central planning, unless you were part of regime/communist party).
Yes we all went to some form of school, but I was being brainwashed to be obedient future soldier for absolutely rubbish ideologies. If I would say something bad about regime even with utmost innocence of a small kid, my parents could easily end up in jail, lives ruined, even distant family torn apart for good.
Yes we all could travel, its just that I could not travel even within different communist countries, not without regime's special approval stamp in passport. Neutral, or god forbid proper western countries were off limits, unreachable, you would be shot on sight on the border, or torn apart by dogs.
And so on and on. Yeah, its just a spectrum, what a joke.
We have had a pretend democracy in the US for the last 60 years.
Okay but that is exactly why I would prefer a western liberal government. It is better and that is ideal is worth criticizing authoritarians for, and fighting to keep in the west.
Microsoft bundling IE was so egregious that the department of justice took time off from chasing drug dealers and terrorists and came within an inch of being split up if it didn't back the fuck off on strangling the web. Financial fraud on Wall St or in the boardroom? Skilling, Fastow, Ebers. Hard prison time. Clinton lied about chasing skirt in the office, ended his career, real consequences.
Even once the Internet was becoming common, the idea that something typed into it might get you fired? Preposterous!
I don't know what being a "western liberal" government means to you, but this thing where all the walls have ears and billionaires do fucking anything they want and no scandal can damage a politician and all the surveilance and technology is an ever-tightening noose and everything is on a permanent record?
Sounds pretty damned Soviet to me.
So not seeing a huge difference between liberal democracies and authoritarians.
Singapore might be a state run authoritatively with the same party in power for 60 years, but you're free to walk around at any time without fear of any crime happening to you. Or public projects that "just work" where in the "western liberal" case their deteriorate or are tied up in bureucracy.
And life if "you’re some kind of minority, politically active, or in legal trouble" is not roses in the west either. From murder by police (e.g. "walking while black") to having stuffed being pinned on you because you're a union activist or for civil rights, etc.
And that's not "now with Trump". That was the case under Obama, Bush, Clinton, all the way to McCarthy, and even all the way after and before the Civil War.
Short term maybe. But there are reasons people want(ed) to move to the USA, and I don't mean refugees. A lot of college educated well-to-do folks have always wanted to come here. Also, the innovation, economic strength, and military strength of the USA will all suffer if the level of corruption increases - because corruption is a burden on the systems that produce those results. You can't get rid of it, but you can't let it run rampant either.
Yes, primarily because its the richest country in the world and it's "easy" to make money.
I think overall you are correct but probably still not safe to generalize. If you're moving to escape persecution then just being "on the other side" achieved this. If you are economically motivated then just leaving doesn't guarantee anything, you can be worse off. This circles back to the idea that the people who are persecuted by a regime paint the public opinion of that regime.
I have friends from Eastern Europe who emigrated to North America (mostly Canada) in the early '90s only to move back shortly after when the reality didn't live up to the hype and their expectations. They had a better life back home. The move was economically motivated, not escaping persecution. Many families under authoritarian regimes had the option to move to a Western country but not being actively persecuted meant they had no hard push and decided for the "comfort of familiarity".
East Berlin slipping into authoritarianism is a good showcase for this. Most people chose to stay in place for long enough to build a wall. We're talking years in which they saw the reality around them but only the ones who actively suffered from persecution chose to leave. Today plenty of East Germans still look back fondly at those times because they didn't feel the objective pain of persecution, only the subjective general suffering of "I could have better but don't".
I do not entirely disagree without, but lack of freedom does intrude into day to day life to some extent.
Accept elected officials whose policies don’t match up with popular opinion and accept standard employment hierarchy.
Just because the censorship is outsourced to the private sector, mostly, doesn’t make the day to day any different when you rely on support of the private sector, alongside discretionary support from the state
Visa holders are experiencing detainment for this specific thing, this cycle. And in other western democracies anyone can be fined and imprisoned for it as well
Wishful thinking that there is imperviousness to disagreeing with the state narrative in the west
The reality is that it’s not always on the mind 100% of the time and you learn to appreciate the day to day life under Eastern and Western authoritarian systems
Sounds a lot like having a job.
Daily life can also be fine in fascism if you don't belong to any "unpopular" groups and don't care about any. Until the customary war starts, that is...
It's good to know liberal democratic progressive countries such like the US would never start a war.
At a very superficial level, sure -- people get up, go to work, go out to eat, go to the movies, fall in love, get married, pay their bills, get sick, die, etc. -- like humans in the West. But this is all within the bounds of what the government decided you should adhere to. If you step outside of those bounds the consequences can be severe and without any legal recourse.
Because authoritarian regimes are a law to themselves, rather than applying the law, they're highly susceptible to corruption. Whether you get in trouble or not depends on who you know (in China it's called guanxi). I lived in China for 6 years, ran a business there; I can tell you the system runs on guanxi.
Access to information is highly restricted. All public media and social networks are censored and/or self-censored. There is no freedom of expression on anything that is "sensitive". This is _not_ limited to "minorities, politically active or those in legal trouble". Yes, people have learned to walk the line carefully.
It is more relaxed than the Mao days or the USSR (I lived there too) where you literally had someone on every floor of a building whose job was to report on what everyone else was doing. But it _looks_ more relaxed than it is. If you've visited China, or even stayed there a few months, or studied there for a year as an exchange student, you won't notice it. But believe me it's there. The educated class know it but they've either a) accepted it ("mei banfa"), or b) have emigrated or have made contingency plans for their kids, or c) are carefully subversive.
Free system don't make those easy either, but you have way more layers of protections, safety nets, and way less death sentences looming over your head. Money and who you know matter less the freer a society is.
However, this is an abstract concept that people can't grasp unless you lived it.
That's the problem with building a society: people can't be arsed to do anything unless they felt the pain. They can't picture problems they didn't live through.
This is why you'll see people telling you the UAE is the best things since sliced bread, only to come back years and years later, once they actually paid the price. They had a car accident with the wrong person. They tried to do business by got pwned by corruption. They got sick because of pollution. A family member got in jail for BS reasons.
All that can happen in a free society, it's just less likely, and the consequence are less dire.
Very hard to make people get how important it is. Anything that requires nuances and projection is near impossible to communicate to the mass.
That's why we have tribes and symbols. This is the only way to sell a project to big groups of humans, because then you substitute the complicated concept with a simple us vs them or good vs bad narrative.
Of course, once you do that, people think even less, and you get extremism rising.
This is why, IMO, free systems never last. Our last 80 years run was a statistical anomaly. We got very lucky.
That affects everyone.
And do you think American media really distorts the "other" side more than Chinese or Russian media distorts what life in the west is like?
having lived for a long time in both china and america: yes. chinese people are given a much more accurate view of life in america than americans are given an accurate view of life in china
thats why there was that meme going around earlier this year when tik tok people joined rednote that said americans were shocked to learn their media was lying about how bad chinese people had it, while chinese people were shocked to learn their media was telling the truth about how bad americans had it
I'm not vouching for any country, I'm just saying the public perception in the US is completely distorted.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese had a slightly more realistic view of the US.
That's... Sufficiently concerning, don't you think?
I can surely tell, the memories of my parents and family members that had to live under the regime isn't really that those were better days, unless one was a collaborator.
Try to do some public comment that can be misused to mean some kind of bad opinion on the regime, and off you go, out of the map.
Like how Amnesty International came to be,
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/amnesty-inte...
You only realise you can’t do something when you come into contact with trying to do it. Otherwise you live your life blissfully unaware of how free you arent.
Its like how you feel that driving is safer than flying, despite driving being the most dangerous thing most people do… you only realise how dangerous it is when its too late.
Or god forbid you want to have some say in policy ... are concerned about opportunities.
Let alone the fact that how authoritarian varies wildly, just like how free ... but they're not the same.
You absolutely can. The obvious example most frequently talked about is that there are plenty of things you can say, which if the wrong person hears them or they trigger automated alarms, it will get you an unfriendly visit by people flashing badges. They might be there to give you a threatening talking-to, or they might be there to arrest you full-stop.
The less obvious example is that even if you don't cross any lines to trigger a direct response like that, it's recorded all the same. It will shape future interactions with law enforcement agencies. You will be flagged as a person of interest, as a hostile actor, etc. Legal speech can very easily make you suspicious and law enforcement will treat you accordingly before they've ever met you. It's not a recipe for a good outcome when the people with badges start off thinking you're likely to pull a gun on them.
At times, it's been far worse than this. I'll direct you to COINTELPRO, or any of the other mryiad of historical instances where the US government has protected its interests by going after domestic elements it sees as subversive.
> On this issue Europe is definitely backsliding
Europe never had free speech to the degree that America did. In many countries, it's unlawful to speak ill of royal figureheads for example.
> for example, see UK police showing up at doorsteps for social media posts
This absolutely happens in America, as I mention above. You might say it's to a different degree, but the end result is the same.
> You can be jailed for years for political speech or wrongthink.
All it takes is for you and your ideology to be labelled as extremist and terrorist, which is a wholly arbitrary line to draw.
Also, there were several news in the past decades about cases when police was even at the doorsteps of perpetrators before their mass shooting because of their social media posts (but more times, Americans were disappointed that police didn’t prevent the shooting even when there were incriminating social media posts). The problem is not social media posts, it never was. It’s their content. And also, it’s not just social media posts most of the time when the police come to your doorsteps even here in Europe. But that cannot be made to sensationalist headlines.
It’s still worse the law situation in Europe, but an adversarial government can find ways to circumvent even the better laws. And from the outside, it looks like that this would happen exactly in the US.
That's true right up until your infallible dear leader invades your neighboring country, fails, and rapidly starts ratcheting down social controls in a desperate attempt to preserve political stability. I don't think Russians would describe day-to-day life as "mostly similar to the west" anymore. China could be next.
I'm not talking about Russia, China or North Korea, though of course it can also fit some of those countries.
If you call it what it actually is, too many Americans might actually connect the dots.
The "happy path" is, the major differences start when you have any kind of a problem, then not having any functional institutions makes the experience _very_ different from the west.
Fascism only doesn't have an effect in the early stages in the sense that loading a gun has little effect on those not frightened by it.
Actually using it is going to become impossible to ignore.
There are also crazy countries like Iran and North Korea.
There's nothing special to China in this regard.
There's very little real data on day to day life in NK, mostly fantasizing by the West, but what do you think is day to day life in Iran? I doubt it's crazy. It's probably a lot like in many other countries. Iran is not a hell-hole.
They are less prepared for problems. And so suddenly problems happen all the time.
But when there are no problems... Things are going well for the average person.
In democratic nations: You aren't allowed to do anything, but you are free to speak up against political power and challenge them as much as you please.
Or that's how it used to be.
You could argue that the CCP is totalitarian, which is authoritarianism++. The problem is that since technology can be used for totalitarian ends, it will be. Putin is authoritarian (certainly by no means Communist), yet reports I hear from Russia make it sound much like China. There's the forced conscription bit for his war against Ukraine, too. Erdogan seems a little better, but his economics-denying policies caused rather large inflation, and life seems to be definitely impacted in other ways, censorship being one of them.
Well, how about just old-school kings? That's Trump, or MBS. Trump's changeability is a feature of kings: once you know where to look, you see it lots of places. Grimm's fairy tales have a number of cases of the king looking favorably on someone and then being influenced against them by someone else; it's practically standard if a king shows up. I saw Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" last week, and it revolves around a king who is having a great time with a visiting king. He wants the other king to stay a while, and has his wife persuade him. But the king thinks he is too easily persuaded, decides this must be because he is sleeping with the queen, tries to murder his friend, and tries the queen for treason. It's a bit sitcom-y, but sitcoms don't work if the premise isn't believable. You see it in Reynard the Fox, where the king is quite easily swayed by smooth words. Darius in the book of Daniel gets manipulated by his courtiers into passing a law against Daniel. Trump does political "fire and motion" (see Spolsky's old blog), so he appears unusually changeable, but random decisions are just a part of kings.
So no, life is not just mostly the same as we have now in the US. What we have in the US is a historical aberration. Unfortunately, we have the authoritarian Left (which denies being authoritarian by redefining words), and we have a foolish authoritarian Right. If the rest of us don't get our act together we are likely to slide back to historical norms.
In it families who can not trust one another, hierarchies of incompetence with bribes upon bribes, no legal recourse to anything, a caste system of actual misery and no perspective for that to ever change. And that is peace time. In wartime the ethnic majority progroms and kicks everyone else out of the country.
Burma, maybe. But even that's a stretch. You're exaggerating for dramatic or comedic effect, that much is certain.
The truth of the matter that you neglect is that in many countries the minorities, allowed political activity, and many other aspects change without proper notice or disclosure following a strategy that originated from Mao China where the government keeps people guessing. Namely, the Anaconda in the Chandelier paradigm.
This is done not only because of issues within government, but also for the benefit of the ruling class to repress the general population using techniques based in torture to promote automaton-like behaviors from induced stress.
The brainwashed masses will always deny reality in such an environment.
When you have subversive elements that have broken the guard rails and caustically destroyed resilient systems making them brittle; bringing things to crisis and then attempting to silently seize power, and they fail to actually do it, you get the natural rise of authoritarianism. This is what happened with Hitler, and in many respects it was the Communists of the time, as well as the post-WW1 reparations, and economics that paved the way for what came after.
Its insidious yes, because people don't recognize or realize the reason the dominoes fall, and the consequences are just a cascading series of generally but not specifically predictable events in history. It certainly also makes matters worse when you have runaway money-printing to further cause issue.
If the cycle was to be stopped before the consequences, it should have been stopped by the cohorts that gradually and subversively put it into action in the first place, but they wanted to seize power instead, have their cake and eat it too. The people of such a group epitomize many of the deadly sins, and they have willfully blinded themselves to it.
I had a very difficult time finding a place to rent as I had no credit score. Only places that were available without credit score was a room to share. That was not an option with a cat, wife and kids.
Finally, I found a place that was willing to accept the entire year's rent up front. Moving such a large amount of money from Canada to US had its own set of hurdles.
Once that was sorted out, I had to deal with yet more craziness to buy a vehicle. I decided to buy a CPO Mazda from the dealer in cash (using a cheque, of course). Once I signed all the papers, they ran a credit check on my newly created SSN. The system could not find my SSN. So, they denied letting me buy the car because they couldn't accept such a large amount from a person they could not verify. My passport and Canadian driver's license were not acceptable proof of ID for the dealer.
On the flip side, my long history with Amex in Canada was ported over. So, they quickly set me up with very high limit credit cards.
We already live in social credit but I fear the ones maintained by companies might be better for the consumer.
What I took from the experience (especially after going through various iterations of it in several other countries) is that most communities are biased against migrants/newcomers. Egalitarianism would be nice, but in practice nepotism and chauvinism are encoded in policy.
Loans are a different story, it varies a lot - but in my country for example, after working 6 months in a full-time job you can get a mortgage without issues. All they care about is how much you are earning, and that you don't have any other debts so that you couldn't afford the repayments.
I’ve had an identical experience as an 19 year old college dropout trying to rent an apartment and buy a car with no established credit history. It at least 5 years to qualify for my first unsecured card with $1,000 credit on a 6-figure salary. I could not qualify for any vehicle, not even a used cheap Honda Civic with my lack of history, and I had to play the Craigslist rental game for years as well.
It is a real pet peeve of mine that people take such hard stands on issues like this when it's so easy to check what's actually happening first. This thread isn't the most egregious example, but it is an example of someone just imagining a system with a big flaw and then suggesting a solution to the problem they made up.
[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/social-security-n...
Their business replies on collecting and storing vast troves of data that influence your credit score.
Were the likes of Experian and Equifax taken out of the credit system, you would see a massive credit crunch as every business that relies on them would have to manually verify anyone's credit score (which could introduce a whole new set of biases) or forego that completely.
Interestingly, when it comes to business credit checks, i.e. Financial viability and director background checks and history - this is something an LLM could very easily find red flags from publicly accessible data before forking out money for a full report.
Go to another dealer, I have bought cars with a personal check without having a credit check at all. I think that's a really unusual policy.
SSN's aren't perfect, you can still commit identity fraud. But high value financial transactions get safer the more you can verify about someone.
Duly noted. I might be in your position one day in the far future. Will prep for it.
Thanks :)
Not really. Try to rent an apartment in Germany (any EU country really).
Canada / USA is a breeze in comparison.
My experience is almost the opposite of yours though. I moved at the end of 2018. I had to put 2 months deposit for rent instead of 1 because I had no credit, but it was otherwise easy. Transferring lots of money over the border is and continues to be a pain but is doable. I think I used OFX for that, my work gives me a bit of a discount.
I also bought a Mazda. New, not pre-owned. For whatever reason, I think it was extra easy for me to secure financing. The guy at the dealership knew precisely what to do, and could answer the credit questions on his own (you know those weird questions they ask like did you have a credit card in 2015, what was your address in 2014, blah blah). Of course the answer was "no" to everything because I had just arrived and had no history. He got me a better deal than the credit union I was with was offering. Did everything on the spot. I think I got 2.9% APR. Maybe not the best, I see ads for 0 to 0.9% sometimes but I didn't really care because I was going to pay it off quick, but that's not the point -- I got financed with zero credit history in the US. I also put $10k on my brand new US credit card which had 6 months 0% interest. I'm sure they wanted me to rack up a bill and then charge me a fortune on interest but I knew I could (and did) pay it in time.
Other places have been a mixed bag. Credit union took me in no problem. In fact, they were camped outside my work which is how they scooped me up. They know we're all high income earners, so smart move on their part.
Meanwhile, Amazon declined to give me a credit card. Citi only give me $5k credit card and would only raise it $1k or $2k/year, meanwhile Capital One gave me $30k.
Also got financing for some couches one time (Synchrony) and then denied another time. I think Synchrony actually checked my Canadian credit history, but only because the guy at Mancini's knew how to do it properly. At the other furniture store, I think they were n00bs and couldn't relay the information correctly.
Weird.
I guess this is what happens when you sometimes have humans in the loop and sometimes not. If any of them just looked at my salary and my employer or poked around a bit, they'd surely know I could pay some $$$.
Seems to me to be dependent on how the incentives line up.
A credit bureau WANTS you to part with any money you might have for a car. So it works out when they control the issuance of your loan.
But would you want the NRA to control the social credit system regulating a firearm purchase?
I prefer that to Chase controlling it: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/19617/00019768782300... (the link details an instance in which Chase was alleged to have debanked a bipartisan, multireligious charity headed by a former U.S. governor, senator and ambassador). The NRA would probably let me buy the gun, after all!
If you read the comment, you’d notice that there were no loans involved whatsoever.
If you can’t rent or buy a car without a credit score, you should only be allowed to buy a gun until you have proven that you’re a trusted member of the society.
Social credit would be like if the government didn't let people lend to you for being a commie or trans. Social credit is not something you can just sort out on the phone.
Requested a personal card with no credit score and that somehow went through fine despite friends in similar circumstances getting rejected. Best guess is because I had a company issued Amex already they could use that as history
>real life also has social credit. were you an asshole to the bartender last week? that goes to your reputation at that bar. did you volunteer with a local non-profit? that goes to your reputation with that organization. even without an algorithm, people remember.
I was musing over something, though. We have creeping Orwellian things like face recognition and the policing of chat histories. But some of this is private, as in, not done by the state. Even when done by the state, it isn't in most places to prop up the regime and prevent dissent. It's big brother mechanisms without a Big Brother. I speculate that it's genuinely motivated by preventing disorder, because (is this true?) over the last couple of decades people have got more disorderly in petty ways to do with thieving and harassing and scamming one another. Then the people don't like it, and so the people politically demand heavy-handed policing of the people.
If you had to move across the country to leave your bad name behind, you used to be able to. And just like bankruptcy you’d start with nothing so it wasn’t exactly easy but it was at least an option. Now what recourse do people have?
Contra: "Wherever you go, there you are." (i.e., you don't stop being an asshole just because you move.)
This is accurate. And taken for granted in the US.
Someone once remarked to me: "I think it's cool you can just pick up and go anywhere (on a huge scale)" - They were from the Netherlands.
I mean, I think you could pick up and move but it was much harder, and how far you could reasonably move when you did move was limited pre-modern era. If you can't move that far, the likelihood of someone knowing you or word spreading is probably higher.
Although I remember seeing an article here on movement of serfs a while back, I think the conclusion was that they were more mobile than one might think.
Hahah... You never offended a bartender for sure.
The big ones (credit score and criminal history) are strongly tied to you, but have recourse to challenge mistakes and remove strikes from your record. The sufficiency of those recourses is open for debate though.
However, all of the private company's social credit systems have a much looser coupling to your actual ID. Often you can just make a new account. If you first get a new credit card, phone, phone number, internet connection, and address, most companies would completely fail to correlate you to their previous profile of you.
Digital social credit is (potentially) an automatically calculated number with strict and unyielding consequences that follows you around for your entire life.
I agree there is a scarier potential there. And also some do, on occasion, escape their context (mostly credit score). They also have bigger contexts, but not so big that I would jump to the Chinese social credit comparison.
That bartender most likely has 3 to 5 worse assholes every shift and dozen usual assholes . He is not going to remember he doesn’t care.
Local non profit after 2 years most likely won’t have the same people and top guys won’t remember all one off volunteers.
Believing any of it having more significance would be attributed to “spotlight effect” in my opinion.
Further my interactions with the bartender aren't likely to be measured or even known about by the non-profit and vice versa. To the extent my "credit" is a factor it doesn't travel with me from location to location.
I don't see how this is a relevant factor. If you're a karen at a restaurant who constantly sends your food back for the tiniest of issues, how is that any different than if the interaction happened online, such as if amazon gave you a bad customer credit score for your excessive returns?
>Further my interactions with the bartender aren't likely to be measured or even known about by the non-profit and vice versa. To the extent my "credit" is a factor it doesn't travel with me from location to location.
Word travels around, does it not? Moreover why is it relevant whether it's a number sitting on a database somewhere, compared to some vibes sitting in some guy's head?
In large, dense cities you’re pretty much anonymous; I could dance naked in a main street today and (provided no one’s recording) carry on with my life with zero repercussions.
Some people make a living out of that fact. Tourist traps do not exactly engage recurring customers, every purchase is a customer’s first.
The larger the social network grows, the worse this system performs. Stereotypes develop because we don't have capacity to judge each individual, confirmation biases reinforce stereotypes until individuals cease to exist, as the stereotype prevents them from becoming close enough to ever overcome it.
So while this system has always existed (well at least as long as recorded history), it continuously worsens and is increasingly at odds with a globalized world.
These are the emergent fruits of living in a complex society, where one cannot realistically track reputation of everyone they encounter across all areas of life. We could move away from some of the formalized systems, if we decided to go back to shaming people for poor behaviors.
One is more distributed and not controlled by any single entity, the other puts all the power over your life into the hands of a few oligarchs.
and people don't just remember. sometimes they set you up to test you and or to give you a chance.
some other times they set someone else up to test you and or to give you a chance.
and sometimes people poison others to increase their and or your social credit.
as Austin Powers (or was it Ali G?) said quite eloquently: "behave".
otherwise, people have always judged each other with any way they could
> Here's what's actually happening. As of 2024, there's still no nationwide social credit score in China. Most private scoring systems have been shut down, and local government pilots have largely ended. It’s mainly a fragmented collection of regulatory compliance tools, mostly focused on financial behavior and business oversight. While well over 33 million businesses have been scored under corporate social credit systems, individual scoring remains limited to small pilot cities like Rongcheng. Even there, scoring systems have had "very limited impact" since they've never been elevated to provincial or national levels.
Compare that to the situation with, say, credit scores in the US --- wholly run by an oligopoly of three private companies, but fully ingrained into how personal finances work here. At least a publicly run credit score would be held accountable, however indirectly, to voters and the law; and its safety might be treated as a matter of national security, rather than having Equifax and Experian leaking data like clockwork.
The fact there's a credit system that protects banks from the people makes it painfully obvious who is in charge of Western society - consider this:
You take out a loan to contract the company to build you a house. The company defaults and disappears overnight. The bank is protected automatically but it's up to you have to run after your money yourself.
China has had a lot of official social control for centuries, but it was local and managed by local cops.[2] As the population became more mobile, that wasn't enough. But a single national system never emerged.
There was a work record history, the Dang'an, created by the Party but to some extent pre-dating communism. This, again, was handled locally, by Party officials. This system didn't cope well with employee mobility. But it didn't get built into a comprehensive national system, either.
China is authoritarian, but most of the mechanisms of coercion are local. Local political bullies are a constant low-level problem.
Kind of like rural Alabama.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-an...
In this case a corporation is judging me and then offering those judgments as a service.
Quite a difference.
The western system creates an illusion of choice, which those in power have found ways to manipulate. It has become merely a convenient tool for them to exploit the rest of the population, while the "free market" and "democracy" keep them oblivious to it.
But whatever people like me say, it will be too hard for most of you to accept the reality.
You seem to think awfully highly of your ability to reason about the world, but I find your claim to be fairly lacking. This all reads like the ramblings of a 19 year old who just discovered Chomsky.
It's difficult to be an intelligent, honest person in the west because of this.
It's like most people don't understand reality. Everything they believe just happens to fit within the circle of allowed beliefs. They are in alignment with the system and benefiting from it (often unwittingly). It's only when the circle of allowed beliefs shrinks that they start to notice what I described above.
I suspect a lot of people were 'awakened' after the most recent Israel/Palestine conflict because that shrunk the circle of allowed topics a lot. A lot of the people who were morally aligned with the ESG agenda before now found themselves partly outside the circle and you could see the agenda shift. Terms like 'diversity' which were originally conceived primarily as racial and gender-based started to drift towards 'neuro-diversity' as a response to the discomfort created by the shrinking circle having shrunk a little too fast...
If you're outside the circle, you can see it much more clearly. The worst part is that you didn't even get to choose your fate. Kind of ironic as the west prides itself on individual choice. The circle shrinks slowly until you suddenly find yourself caught well outside of it when the consequences have accumulated beyond a certain threshold.
The first time I visited China I was under 21 but I had heard the drinking age was 18 so I went to a convenience store to buy a beer. Person running the till was probably 12 and didn’t say a word or ask for ID. Unbelievably lax compared to the US sometimes.
I generally think it’s easier and more effective to track the outputs rather than the inputs: you don’t need to track how many beers they buy, just outlaw public intoxication. And enforce that law.
I think, at least from my interpretation of it from being in China and having Chinese family, that something like underage drinking is seen more as a family issue, than a legal issue. What stops the 16 year old from drinking? The fact that their friends / family will see them being drunk, and think less of the person and their family. A 16 year old being drunk in public is family issue. Sure, the cops will intervene at some point, but China has very little drunken / raucous public behavior than the west does.
What if I want to buy copious amounts for a party? Or there was a discount so you want to stock up? This seems a bit shortsighted, it is not always the case that if you buy something then you need to consume it right away.
Weird take. There’s a massive difference between a centralized government-run system and a decentralized system run by individual companies.
Credit scores are closest but limited to financial behaviors
They are also very much not decentralized.
Look, social credit is neither a new concept nor is it destined to be some Orwellian/Black Mirror/Authoritarian tool that keeps undesirables enslaved in low-wage work or targeted for “reeducation” - that’s a decision we allow Governments or Corporations to make on our behalf by refusing to bother regulating these systems or holding bad actors accountable.
The sooner we accept that this is possible, that it’s already here in many cases, the sooner we can begin negotiating regulations in good faith with one another. Maybe it’s placing limits on the data corporations can gather and retain, or maybe it’s preventing the government from acquiring private data without transparent judicial warrants tied to crimes. Maybe it’s something else entirely!
All I know is the current status quo enriches Capital while harming people, governments, and Democracy. I think that’s bullshit, and we should do something about it.
I'm speaking from a Swedish perspective but for a long time already we had these "credit checks", where a company can quickly order a check on a customer to see if they're eligible for paying via invoice, or installments. And the consumer gets a letter in the mail notifying them of each credit check and who requested it. They basically see if you have any large debts, and what your reported income is.
But now some companies have gone even further and actually invented a credit score for us, that you have to pay them a subscription fee to see.
All this is an organic progression driven by corporations who simply want to know if consumers are worth their time and risk.
And that I have a choice of phones, or even no phone at all, and none of my phone options is legally permitted to execute me.
Further down, the article argues that switching costs between private companies are ‘enormous.’ I don’t know if they are that large, but however painful it is to switch from Apple to Google, it’s orders of magnitude easier than moving between nation-states.
It notes that private systems ‘increasingly collaborate.’ Sure, and that can be a problem. But there’s a huge difference between a patchwork of systems which collaborate and a pervasive, inescapable State.
Finally, it notes that governments purchase private data. Sure, but are they using that data to restrict fundamental freedoms? They may be (Canada’s restriction of economic rights for folks who donated to protesters comes to mind — although I don’t think that was actually enabled by purchasing private ‘social credit’ data).
> Utah's House passed a law banning social credit systems, despite none existing in America.
Does the article contend that Americans live in a social credit system, or that none exists in America? It can’t have it both ways!
Finally, the article leads with a definition of ‘social credit’ as evolving beyond an original definition of ‘distributing industry profits to consumers to increase purchasing power.’ Whatever that might mean, it seems completely irrelevant to the meaning of the phrase under discussion, as relevant as mentioning in a discussion on O.J. Simpson that ‘O.J.’ can mean ‘orange juice’ (in Mr. Simpson’s case, it stood for ‘Orenthal James.’
Plenty of cops have shot/executed innocent people, and were declared not guilty due to qualified immunity.
Plus, a phone in China can't execute you either. It'd be the police goons who do that.
Luckily not a single US citizen was ever executed by the US government
The reality is, there's always an entity that controls a society. If not culture or religion, it will be the government or shadow government, or corporations and banks.
Never forget that the main reason WFH was attacked in such a coordinated effort within a short period of time was because it threatened banks' business interests and model. Who's going to pay banks if landlords (commercial and residential) can't milk renters' money? It's a food chain and on top of it are the banks, and at the bottom are you, the average worker living paycheck to paycheck. WFH disrupted that and shifted the power to you. You don't have to rent/own downtown, so you (landlord) don't have to pay hefty property taxes. As a result, the government is losing, banks are losing, landlords will finally have to find real jobs instead of leeching off others, and all of that was a nightmare to them, and thus the push for hybrid or whatever under the fake claims it promotes cooperation and teamwork.
Depending on the type of bankruptcy declared, debtor exams happen here.
There's a reason: I used to be a real asshole troll, in the UseNet days (Don't listen to the folks with rose-colored glasses, telling you that things were better in those days; it was really bad).
I feel that I need to atone for that. I'm not particularly concerned whether anyone else gives me credit (indeed, it seems to have actually earned me more enemies, here, than when I was a combative jerk).
I do it because I need to do it for myself. I feel that we are best able to be "Productive members of Society," when we do things because we have developed a model of personal Integrity.
- China: no records about a person is a good thing
- Elsewhere: no records is a very bad thing
- China: records can be corrected and eliminated
- Elsewhere: records are permanentAlthough Meta is trying to "fix" that last part of course.
It's popular because it solves the problem (not ALL problems, but the one they're trying to solve) and it's easy and low-barrier to implement and use.
- it's not at all the same as an aggregated government-assigned score (though we may be on the road to that)
- the take of "things are so bad in China and basically the same here" are very naive; live in China for 5+ years and I guarantee you'll have a different view
At times it makes me wary of protecting my score (which may not even actually exist), and I'll often just take the loss rather than return something.
> the image [of overt social-credit tech in public] is so powerful that Utah's House passed a law banning social credit systems, despite none existing in America.
More like the LDS Church banned social credit systems that would compete with theirs lol
> You may argue there's a fundamental difference between corporate tracking and government surveillance. Corporations compete; you can switch services. Governments have monopoly power and can restrict fundamental freedoms.
By saying:
> This misses three key points: First, switching costs for major platforms are enormous. Try leaving Google's ecosystem or abandoning your LinkedIn network. Second, corporate social credit systems increasingly collaborate. Bad Uber ratings can affect other services; poor credit scores impact everything from insurance to employment. Third, Western governments already access this corporate data through legal channels and data purchases.
This is weak and handwavy.
* People leave Google's ecosystem all the time; it's practically sport here on HN.
* "Bad Uber ratings can affect other services" - is this theoretical or has this actually happened? Without specific citation, I'm calling bullshit.
* Poor credit ratings make it hard to get credit, yep. However, this area is heavily regulated and really only comes into play when you're asking someone to extend credit to you. It won't stop you getting on a train.
* It's not clear what governments are doing with corporate data. She needs to be a lot more specific about the harms here.
Also, saying that social credit systems in China are "limited to small pilot cities" is not particularly reassuring. The pilot programs are what we should freak out about. When it's rolled out en masse it's too late.
That supports the original argument if anything. If "Here's how I did X" generates interest on HN, it's quite likely that X is very challenging for the average person.
There's no sure thing to be an alternative that is actually different.
I'm reminded of the SCOTUS arguments about cellphones and tracking, or just technology in general (the actual case(s) aren't so relevant as the arguments).
The argument at one point was that since you're carrying a cellphone or using a computer in some way that tracks your location you made a choice and that end result might be to just give up your right to privacy / location data because you chose to carry a cellphone.
Fortunately a few judges recognized that cell phones aren't just an accessory you pick and choose, they're part of daily life now, to operate in society you generally will need / want one, accordingly you should be able to do so without giving up some rights.
Unfortunately, the same arguments didn't carry over into topics like binding arbitration and so on ...
But it misses a huge nuance on the whole "dystopian" thing. The main thing about "social score bad" takes is that the government will use that scoring. It's not private <-> private. Everything the author mentions about the various scoring in the US (and EU for that matter, although to a lesser extent in some cases) is between you and private institutions. The government does not "track" or "access" or "use" those 3rd party scores.
It's a bit like 1st amendment in the US. You have the right of free speech with regards to the government. That means the government cannot punish you for your speech. But that says nothing about your relationship with private parties. If you go to a government institution and tell them their boss sux, in theory you shouldn't be punished for that, and they'll keep serving you. But the same does not extend to a private bakery. Or a bar. Or any private property. Tell them their boss sux, and you might not get service.
So yeah, there are lots of 3rd party rating services. But they're mainly between you and those 3rd parties. The government mainly stays out.
On the other hand, "private" has the downside of falling into unaccountable monopolies/duopolies. You don't have a individual choice about having a credit score, or whether banks can use it, or with which companies. You have no control, there's no accountability.
If credit scores were run by the government, then in theory democratic processes could regulate them in terms of accuracy, privacy, who was allowed to access them, for what purposes, etc. There would be actual accountability to the people, in what that there isn't when it comes to private companies.
While you say "lots of 3rd party rating services... are mainly between you and those 3rd parties", many are not. They're between one 3rd party (a bank, a landlord), and another (Equifax, Experian).
The ones that are, they're eBay, Uber, etc. Which seem more obviously defensible as being privately run.
No: The dystopia comes from helplessness and inability to appeal injustice, regardless of who/what manages the system or how it is legally constructed.
We must take care to distinguish between the problem we want to avoid versus the mechanism we hope will avoid it... especially when there are reasons to believe that mechanism is not a reliable defense.
> But the same does not extend to a private bakery. Or a bar. Or any private property. Tell them their boss sux, and you might not get service.
The difference here isn't because they're "private", but because you implicitly assume you will have alternatives, other local bakeries or bars which are reliably neutral to the spat.
Things become very different if they're all owned by Omni Consumer Products or subscribed to Blacklist as a Service.
Except, of course, it's not that simple. There are a host of behaviors and traits that private businesses are not allowed to consider when choosing whether or not to provide you products or services. These carve-outs to free association exist because at any given time a large enough portion of the population exists of bigots who choose their associations based on characteristics that the rest of society has decided are not acceptable grounds for refusing service. So we compel service if we think not providing it is sufficiently shitty and harmful. Something similar happens when a private institution, or class of institution, is so critical to life or participation in society that exclusion serves as a form of semi-banishment. Such institutions are put under even stricter standards for association.
The idea that social credit or similar are totally fine and peachy so long as it's "only" private institutions using it is a fantasy entertained by rugged individualists who naively narrow their analysis of power dynamics to "big government bad" and discount their dependency on extremely powerful private organizations.
It's much harder to opt-out of a government than a privately-crafted social scoring system. But some become so large that you can't de-facto opt-out, not without significant consequences to your quality of life... And that becomes a problem.
> Your credit score doesn't just determine loan eligibility; it affects where you can live, which jobs you can get, and how much you pay for car insurance.
> LinkedIn algorithmically manages your professional visibility based on engagement patterns, posting frequency, and network connections, rankings that recruiters increasingly rely on to filter candidates.
I always found it strange that they are not allowed to discriminate based on gender/religion etc but they are allowed to discriminate based on if you are likable or not. As in they can refuse to serve you as long as they don't mention it's based on anything that's illegal to discriminate against.
the more I think about it, the more I think this is the core of a rePUBLIC
there's a bunch of private actors, the "citizens" who get together to form the republic, and thereby establish "the public space" aka the commons
This is absolutely untrue. The government is a customer of all of these companies, and can whip up a chorus of brownshirts to loudly complain about any objections to the government doing this. There's a reason everybody who talks about speech should know what a long obsolete device called a "pen register" does. It's what we now refer to as a public-private partnership.
> It's a bit like 1st amendment in the US.
It is, in that the government can pay or blackmail* companies into censoring your speech, and doesn't have to bother with prior restraint.**
-----
[*] ...through selective application of what is usually antitrust legislation.
[**] ...which the 1st Amendment never mentions, but has been bound to it by people and judges who wanted to censor speech about communism and birth control.
Non-existent in the country I live in. There's a national registry of debtors and people end up there for a very good reason.
>Linkedin, Amazon
There's no reason to consider these to be essential services, I am not using either and I'm doing perfectly fine in life.
LOL
>Uber, Airbnb
There are several copycats, traditional taxis and hotels are still a thing and public transportation or your own car are valid alternatives
What even is this article? I skimmmed the rest of it and it just seems like the crux of the article is about proving how China's systems are actually fine while ommitng the fact that their systems are mandated by the state. Is Chinese propaganda what makes it to the front page of HN nowadays?
Yep. Because USA is a country which still ostensibly has free speech norms in its society, so you could get human rights commentary one day, foreign propaganda another day (even though the federal Trump government arrests political opponents), where meanwhile many human rights movements are banned in China. As the Soviets would say in the early 20th century, "And you are lynching Negroes". False equivalence is the bread and butter of authoritarian propaganda. By equating the two, we may fail to distinguish right from wrong and slide further toward authoritarianism.
Um no. That is not the only difference by a LONG SHOT.
If I want to evaluate whether or not I want to involve myself with you, in any capacity, then that negotiation is between you and me. I can ask for references. I can ask for a credit check. I can go pay for a police background check. I can read public review sites. Or, I might decide that because you listen to country & western music you're not a real person and I can't know you and leave the vetting at that.
Consequentially, however, that dealing impacts our relationship and none other. You might find other people who don't care about the same "social credit criteria" that I do and you might find yourself dealing with them instead.
That's kind of the beauty of this thing we call "freedom." Anyone gets to choose who they want to deal with (or not) and make their own individual choices. The "systems" they opt in are always opt in (or at least they should be).
The difference between a government "social credit" system and individuals (businesses or people) vetting other individuals based on their own chosen requirements is force.
A government system mandates this across society in a broad authoritarian sweep. Get on the bad side of "the party" and now you are a social pariah and will not have any luck finding anyone who wants to deal with you, country music lovers be damned, because it is forced upon everyone. A business has no choice but to apply "the" system because if they don't they get punished. It is not opt-in, it is a one-sized-fits-all mandated by force of law system that removes individual discretion and choice from the equation.
That's a LOT different than just "we're upfront about it."
Furthermore, while I appreciate when authoritarians are honest about their violations of basic human rights and freedoms, that doesn't suddenly make what they are doing OK. I don't want to deal with a thief who is honest about their thievery any more than I want to deal with one who tries to hide it.
I think here is the difference between your and authors optics. You count businesses (does this include large corporations/organizations?) as individuals.
Congratulations on opting out of your business relationship with Experian, then.
The rules of the financial credit system are mostly opaque and work through indirect levers. This AML social credit system also totally global, extending anywhere that the FATF has sway.
This rings very true. It's pervasive online, and HN is no exception. The "China scare" is pervasive, "in China they do (some imagined nasty thing that of course the US or Europe would never do, no siree!)".
The systems are not the same.
I don't use any of these things.
I counted 0, but I do not live in US/China. It will probably came here as well.
We may not call it social credit, but in practice we’re already building it.
Well, delivery addresses can be somehow anonymized by the use of PO boxes; names on credit cards, not so much.
use the same phone number, email address or credit card and they know you are the same person, use the same wifi spot or IP address with the same behaviour and they can intimate you are the same.. Even badly written data analysis can do this and a VPN from another country and different username wont convince any system with an ounce of sense.
Instaban. Every. Time.
Same thing when some websites require you to sign in with Google- there is no Google user score yet but they can ban you from their platform.
>Your Uber rating doesn't affect your mortgage rate, and your LinkedIn engagement doesn't determine your insurance premiums. But the infrastructure is being built to connect these systems. We're building the technical and cultural foundations that could eventually create comprehensive social credit systems.
She doesn't provide any citation for this
> Corporate platforms increasingly share reputation data. Financial services integrate social media analysis into lending decisions
Again she doesn't provide any citation for this, but more importantly she doesn't explain why she thinks it's wrong. Someone who posts "Feeling lucky so headed to the craps table" probably shouldn't be lent to, if only for their sake
I mean why not? Any customer that effectively makes the company look bad can be banned by the company.
I bring up Uber/Lyft in particular because 99/100 drivers break traffic laws. The speed (10-15 miles per hour above the speed limit), they tailgate which is both putting me in danger, putting other car in danger, and is illegal (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...). They'll do things like stop a full car and half past the waiting point at an intersection (have pictures of this). In other words, there a line behind which a car is supposed to wait. Then there's a crosswalk. They've stopped the car so it's past the crosswalk while waiting for the light to change. They turn right on red when the sign says no right on red. Etc....
I'd give them all 1 star out of 5 except for the fear mentioned above. That my "social credit" with the company would have them drop me as a customer.
Gotta get my FU money as quickly as possible and go live in the woods.
I've said this before in many ways to other Americans and they just join the very vocal "china bad, usa good, you're weird for liking china" while then wondering why they don't understand their own credit score, etc.
Imagine having a less than 600 credit score and buying a car, buying a house, renting an apartment, opening a bank account, even getting insurance lol you are auto denied.
"the only difference between your phone and china's social credit system is that your phone is real"
ok, maybe
... so yeah, it's totally fine lets do it ...
WHAT
it's in our respective government's interests to tell us that of course the system we live in is the best, hey look at those other people living under tyranny 'over there', aren't you lucky to be living over here, under us?
> The gap between Western perception and Chinese reality is enormous
They inserted "nationwide".
The social credit score in one China region (khm Xinj... khm) is truly dystopian, and I bet people there don't care whether it's "nationwide" or not, if they can literally be sterilized or get sent to concentration camps because of that.
But they said it's not nationwide! As of 2024.
One day you'll be denied care or your insurance premiums will quadruple because you buy too much sweets in Amazon, or because you once said you fell off a chair while drunk in a party in Instagram. Then you'll care.
Really?
I want to rent a hotel room or Airbnb: risk of me ruining or stealing from the place is include in the price. I want hire a contractor: I may run into the same guy who scammed 10 people already and changed name of his business again. I want to rent a car: it's more expensive because of reckless drivers renting it as well and the owner have no way to tell if I am a responsible one. We pay idiot/scammer premium everywhere.
There is a real need for that mechanism and if we keep putting our head in the sand big corps with proprietary solutions will cover that need. That is the worst of both worlds.
Specifically all of the parts about commenting. Looking at your posts it seemed like you had no idea these exist.
Zero. Are everyone really that terminally online? I reject most things that use an app. Yesterday I encountered a coffee vending machine that required an app. I walked away. Uncle Ted was right.