China expands its system of tracking a citizen’s behavior with a social credit score, and limiting his freedoms if it goes negative. Your neighbor reports you smoking a cigarette at your house, and when you try to fly to Hong Kong the flight attendant says, your score is too low, get off the plane. Is this just a dystopian nightmare spawned by communism, or could measures taken by American companies to nudge consumer behavior lead to such a scenario in the land of the free?
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Get Off the Plane: Your Social Credit Score Just Went Negative
China expands its system of tracking a citizen’s behavior with a social credit score, and limiting his freedoms if it goes negative. Your neighbor reports you smoking a cigarette at your house, and when you try to fly to Hong Kong the flight attendant says, your score is too low, get off the plane. Is this just a dystopian nightmare spawned by communism, or could measures taken by American companies to nudge consumer behavior lead to such a scenario in the land of the free?
11 replies on “Get Off the Plane: Your Social Credit Score Just Went Negative”
Are we really that far away from it now?
Credit Score, Driving Record, Criminal Record.
All required for you to get a job, participate in commerce,
or even rent a spot for you to live.
Certain places refusing to do business with you because you have certain political beliefs (which I thought was unlawful)
Some jobs even demand that you give them access to your social media accounts (to me that is tantamount to them demanding to read my diary)
Sadly, I think we are already there.
Remember for future reference that Absolute Zero is -273.15 on the metric scale, but -459.67 on the American scale. You better represent!
There was a Black Mirror episode – creepy as heck – about exactly this that aired a couple of years ago. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-score-like-black-mirror-2016-10
Work toward a score of zero? Remember Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf?
Society does not exist. Only individuals exist.
An integration of the actions taken by individuals make up a market for goods, services, and ideas. The market exists ONLY as an abstraction. An abstraction cannot think, choose, or have consequences except as the level that it is understood by individuals impacts the thinking of those individuals. If there are no individuals holding that abstraction, a market does not exist.
THIS is exactly the nature of society. It is an abstraction that integrates the actions made by the individual members of the society. An abstraction cannot think, choose, or have consequences except as the level that it is understood by individuals impacts the thinking of those individuals. If there are no individuals holding that abstraction, a society does not exist.
The wannabe dictators of the universe try to believe they can have their abstractions and eat them too. They try to pretend they can get away with by ignoring the individuals subtending their abstraction and that by their enslavement or elimination can still have their abstractions. They cannot. They can only pretend they have it by the sacrifice of the individual. Run out of willing sacrificial victims and, ***poof***, there goes your abstraction.
Steve, I love your breathalyzer story. I never heard of that. At a quarter a pop, you would have paid for that machine the first night it was installed at the Hurdy Gurdy Saloon in Mankato MN in the early 1970’s. You would have been a millionaire after the 1st year.
On a similar note, Highpoint had a naming contest on their new 9mm handgun. To Highpoint’s credit, they appear to be taking the frivolously favored name seriously and will be calling it The YEET Cannon. I suspect they will have great sales as a result of their apparent good faith.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/06/29/yeet-cannon/
Lived the breathalizer story though – I wish we had those back in my bar hopping days!
This is again one of the rare times that I strongly disagree with all of you – You’re strongly underestimating how severe this problem already is. Youtubers whose livelihoods depend on their videos are being demonetized or even banned – you experience this firsthand. We’re seeing Conservatives banned from Paypal & other payment processors. Banks and credit card processors are refusing to serve Conservatives, and we even see people like Laura Loomer banned from Uber and Lyft.
I don’t know where this ends, but make no mistake that this problem is already in full swing.
I’ve read articles to that effect and I agree. Once the left takes over – and that will happen – we can all start wearing masks when we leave the house.
I think I missed the part where we disagree.