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Comment by tnuc | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps they should be jailed instead?

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/debtors...

Imprisoning people who don't pay official fines is normal in most western countries.

So, playing devil's advocate, why then is it so outrageous to prevent people from flying or staying in five star hotels in order to put pressure on them to make them pay? Wouldn't you prefer being free and not being able to fly over being in prison? Similarly we also have credit rating agencies collecting information on your financial status and they may as well deny you access to certain services based on that information. And yet another interesting field is people being ignorant or simply assholes, throwing your trash on the ground, being really loud at night, all the annoying small things making the world a worse place while not really being bad enough to justify using the usual big judicial system hammer all the time. Doesn't sound that unreasonable that retaliating with a couple of small stings to your freedom could make you reconsider your behavior.

I had this thought too. It sounds, just from those couple sentences in the article, like the things people are being denied are only expensive luxuries. Which, if you're in debt, you probably shouldn't be spending money on anyway and it might even help to have an outside party keep you in check while you get your finances back on track.

I think the big question to ask is whether these policies are geared to pressure/aid people in getting into a better financial situation, or whether they're geared to permanently punish people who got into a bad situation in the first place. The part mentioned above sounds like it could be the former, but:

"...the system needs to be improved so 'discredited people become bankrupt.'"

Sounds pretty condemningly like the latter.

I totally agree, such a system certainly has a big potential to be misused, either by design or by abuse. But if you think about it as a softer judicial system, you might be able to get something useful out of it. Just be really careful to not go too far and use the same care as in the normal judicial system when building it.

If there's one thing we can all agree on about China's flavor of authoritarianism, it's that it's efficient. When they decide to fix something - be it their economy, or their environmental problems, or corruption, or anything else - they just get it done.

Of course, the flip-side of maximal executive power is that it can be abused. In the past that's how authoritarian governments have basically always turned out. But China seems to be getting closer than any other to creating a version that's actually functional. It's scary, but also fascinating to watch from afar.

China promised us in 2010 that they would fix their pollution problem in 4 years. That didn’t happen.

Every 8 or so years there is another crackdown on corruption, as part of political housekeeping. Each time they say the problem is fixed, but then it comes back.

China is the worst example of “getting things done” if that is your standard. The central government has been less powerful than you would think historically. Now, is it “different this time”? Maybe, but it definitely wasn’t before.

I'm not banking on it turning out to be a good thing, but I am curious.

The Chinese system seems clearly intended to punish, not to get justice for those owed money.

There are very few types of debts a western country will imprison for: Official fines (for a crime that you were proven guilty of) and child support are pretty much the only two in the US.

From the article: "it is unclear what offenses those targeted in the travel ban have committed."

"Hou Yunchun, is quoted as saying the system needs to be improved so "discredited people become bankrupt."

Trying to compare those two systems is pretty blind. You can argue the US system isn't perfect, but it's hardly the same.

Not everywhere - there are countries for example that put you in a kind of servitude to the state, where a state-controlled agency takes all of your income and gives you a stipend to buy food and other necessities with. The rest gets used to pay stuff like your house first, and then all of it gets put into your various debts.

Seeing as it's basically indentured servitude, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's definitely better than prison though, because you're still (more or less) free to move around whenever you're not working.

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