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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Citizens with low social credit would also be prohibited from enrolling their children at high-paying private schools

that's the most fucked up part. sure, I can see why you want to punish people who smoke on train platforms, but punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? would it be justifiable during a bank robbery hostage situation for the state to take their kids/spouse/family hostage for leverage?

>Being publicly named as a bad citizen. [...] However, people will be notified by the courts before they are added to the list, and are allowed to appeal against the decision within ten days of receiving the notification.

I'm sure that the CCP will provide a fair and impartial trial for those people.

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This one looks a little weird (the original quote is very sketchy with little detail) so I researched on it a little. If you search for "私立学校老赖" you can get a picture of what is going on. You can try Google Translate if you don't read Chinese.

Laolai 老赖 refers to those who can afford to pay debts but refuse the court orders to do so. High cost private school tuition is considered luxury spending. So the ability to afford private school is considered constructive evidence of ability to pay debt outstanding.

China needs to figure out a personal bankruptcy system. But it also needs to figure out how to deal with people who hide assets through friends and relatives.

As it stands I doubt this has much to do with social mobility, as some seem to be worried about here.

Don't you feel your capacity and willingness to do some research and your knowledge of a foreign language and being aware of what is actually being said limits your ability to easily participate in outbursts of online moral outrage?

Not really. It only impacts the ability to be xenophobhic with a specialization in antinonromancy. There are many other opportunities to engage in reactionary outrage, especially in areas of scientific research.

>Laolai 老赖 refers to those who can afford to pay debts but refuse the court orders to do so.

garnishing wages or seizing money from bank accounts isn't a thing in china?

Hiding piles of cash in a neighbours shed or by giving all your possessions to family members, then claiming inability to pay is the problem this is trying to solve.

According to the linked article, social credit can be moved up or down for many reasons: "examples infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online."

That means that if your social credit goes down for any of these reasons, which are not all financial, then you can be barred from the best schools.

I think it's far more likely to be used to keep top schools (which feed into top gov't/industrial positions) clean of any rabble-rousers.

Private schools aren’t the top ones in China. The top schools are all public (e.g., 人民中学). Private schools are where rich Chinese and foreigners send their kids because (a) they couldn’t get into better schools or (b) they couldn’t get into any public school because the hukou system is so screwed up. There used to be a range of lower cost private schools for migrant worker kids (and probably still is outside of Beijing).

Do you mean that the private schools could use social credit scores to select students? That is possible, maybe even likely. But one would think or at least hope that there will be diversity, as some private schools may then cater to the unmet demands by others. Remember private schools are in the business of competing for both revenue and talents. A "best" private school that refuses to accept the best students may soon find that they are no longer the "best" school anymore.

OP was talking about a government ban. I could only find cases of courts enforcing civil judgement this way at some cities.

> a bank robbery hostage situation for the state to take their kids/spouse/family hostage for leverage

The CPC already does that, seriously. They threaten family of oversea critics.

>The CPC already does that, seriously. They threaten family of oversea critics.

Foreign Policy recently published an excellent piece on just that:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-re...

I'm not condoning it. Just explaining it.

It's culture. In China, you are your family/clan and your family is you. Family in China does not refer to just your immediate, but rather your entire family including 2nd cousins. Individualism isn't as strong there. Why? Due to China's society being 'low trust', you need to rely on your family to survive and thrive.

>Citizens with low social credit would also be prohibited from enrolling their children at high-paying private schools

This is what leads to a sort of caste system, Because the children of people with bad social credit cannot go to good schools, they are stuck in a perpetual cycle of bad social circles which leads to bad social credit and poverty.

This just leads to a cycle of poverty and discrimination without any opportunity for people to redeem themselves.

Also reminds me of a Black mirror episode on social credit.

But the existence of high-cost private schools that, ostensibly, only the well-off can afford, already reinforces a "caste system" of sorts, no? I'm not sure how adding another dimension to this, namely social credit, could make it worse.

China already has a strong caste system via its hukou (residency) system.

> punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable?

Morally? It's not.

Pragmatically? Keeps the parents in line, just like physically threatening their family would, but without the cost of all that personal attention.

False. This is unjustified double punishment for kids whose parents don't care.

I notice you tried to justify immorality by splitting the response into "morally" and "pragmatically". Implying both (1) morality can be argued against in this case and (2) that it has the weaker argument. I also disagree with this approach here.

> I notice you tried to justify immorality

Hmmm. Perhaps I wasn't clear. You are reading a _lot_ more into my post than I intended.

I'm an Objectivist Libertarian who thinks that (a) what China is doing in this case is positively evil, and (b) that any level of resistance up and to including violent revolution on the part of the Chinese people would be entirely moral and justified.

By explaining the pragmatic 'justification' for this abhorrent system, I was trying to make the point that the Chinese Government gives exactly no shits about the morality involved; they want to exercise power, and this is seen as a cost-effective means of doing so.

The implied point I was _trying_ to make (and, clearly, failing) was that pragmatism in politics is the devil.

No idea where 2) comes from. He's just saying that the Chinese government is intent on making it's own job easier and certainly it is. If anything he's implying this is an instance of a "principle-agent problem". Managers very often do what's best for them, regardless of general consequences, 'cause they can.

Parents without enough credit don't get to send their kids to private school in America either. I'm not sure how you could overlook the fact that our whole civilization is founded upon a social credit system far more pervasive and malicious than this thing the Chinese are introducing. We should really sort out the problems in our own backyard before criticizing the chinks for having a system that picks winners and losers based on how they behave.

In the US, we're moving away from the time when black people could not board flights. In China, they are moving towards a similar system but for perhaps different people groups.

Also, please be aware that the social credit system that we have in the west has not blackballed you for the comment you just made speaking against it. There is no way for me to report you for your distaste for the biases in the US system, even though you are clearly "inciting unrest." (In repressive countries your comment would be off-limts.)

There are tens of millions of Americans who don't have enough credit banked to board a flight. Or to get healthcare. Or to live in humane conditions. Or to eat 3 swuare meals a day.

And there all kinds of things I can't say at work or else I'll be denied credit needed for pretty much everything.

>There are tens of millions of Americans who don't have enough credit banked to board a flight

what is this "credit" required to board a flight that you speak of? you can pay for tickets with debit or cash at the counter, so it's not like you need a credit card to fly. if you mean payment for the ticket, i think that's a very reasonable requirement in exchange for the service provided. i did a quick search for a roundtrip flight from new york to chicago on google flights, and it works out to $168 on amirican airlines and $50 on spirit airlines. there might be "tens of millions of Americans" who don't have that much money saved up, if you can't save $50 for a plane ticket, you probably have bigger things to worry about than not being able to get from new york to chicago.

Agreed, if you don't have 50 credits for a plane ticket you've got bigger things to worry about. Money is credit. It controls our behavior and everything we do. It decides winners and losers. If you don't act a certain way, and do certain things, then you don't get money and you don't get to fly on a plane, amongst many other things. The capitalist system is a type of social credit system. It's a harsh, unforgiving, cruel and unjust system, and we're as immersed in it as fish in water, so we take it for granted. We take it for granted, that is, until we're introduced to a slight variant and you think about it for a few minutes, and 'Oh my gosh, keeping score on people? That's terrible!'

But if you think about it, a system that rewards people based on whether or not they're an asshole does make more sense than one that rewards people only on their ability to accumulate points- it seems to me that such a system would lead to pathological outcomes. Which, of course, it does.

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