Hacker News Reader

Comment by NoblePublius | Hacker News Reader

It you think this is dystopian, you probably have good credit. Try setting up home internet with a FICO under 600. Try renting an apartment in Williamsburg with an Experian score under 750. Try getting a civil service job while your gas bill is overdue. America invented this.

View on HN

Some of these seem like really bad comparisons. If your credit score is bad, you just have to pay your ISP in advance, rather than be billed monthly in arrears, which is pretty logical. This is also just a rational response by a private company in response to a customer’s bad credit. Not that I don’t have lots of issues with the credit reporting agencies in America.

The Chinese system seems a whole lot more dystopian since it’s state run, and since they are trying to link unrelated things — i.e. penalize you for certain “anti-social” behavior that goes far beyond having poor credit.

Ironically this is what the American credit system was designed to avoid. Pre modern credit score, bank loans were given out based on things like “moral character”, the theory being that alcoholics shouldn’t get loans, but it turns out this has a high false negative rate. Most hurt were of course minorities. After the credit system access to credit exploded, whether for better or worse.

Credit scores are a gliding scale. With all peoples' purchasing data getting increasingly accessible for commercial purposes, it may well be that 'good' score is measured in purchasing power, and that poor people that never had any debts still get a 'bad' credit rating.

This is already how it works, more or less, but when such credit rating becomes (a weighted) part of a social credit system, then it hardwires wealth inequality. A rich person can do a lot more 'wrongs' before low social credit becomes a problem

Give me a break. I rent to tenants with horrible credit all the time. And unless you’re handling handling money or sensitive info or getting a security clearance, bad credit won’t stop you from getting a job. You people need to stop reading the internet echo chamber and go talk to some actual people in the world. Tens of millions of people have bad credit. You think they’re all homeless and unemployed?

Your credit score will not decrease because you wrote this comment, and mine will not decrease because I conversed with you.

I mean... pay off your debt on time, and don't take on more debt than you can service. That will fix your credit score problems.

Anticipating pushback — yes, our healthcare system is atrocious, but the "all bankruptcy is medical bankruptcy" thing is just a meme: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0...

Also, I know that people are bad at thinking about debt, so I don't morally fault them for taking on more than they can handle. I've spent beyond my means before! That said, society needs some level of personal accountability in order to function.

Under the American system, you earn bad credit by paying certain bills over 30 days late. Bad credit equals higher rates on loans.

While I hate this system for privacy reasons, there is always going to be some sort rating system for businesses to avoid high risk customers.

You're comparing a social credit system to a financial credit system. Your hospital doesn't care who your friends are.

What happens in these cases?

you are not in the system. So you do not partake.

no lease, no credit card, no nothing. America gave it to the corporations. So what difference does it make if an all mighty corp does it or the gov't?

This is completely false. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think the tens of millions of people with bad credit are all unemployed and homeless? How exactly did they even get that bad credit in the first place?

I suppose that one can argue in a hyper-capitalist society that the credit rating would be the only social score that mattered, but I suppose that there is more to it in the Chinese model, in that probably you still can't do those things in Chinese society without the financial means to do them, but now there are extra obligations on the individual rather akin to not committing Thoughtcrime.

In China there will be points deducted for buying too many video games because it's considered lazy and not productive to the overall society.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com