China's social credit system is both unique and part of a global trend
tutanota.com
tutanota.com
Make the goals to get the most profit from the least investment into the work force, coerce their productivity with increasing restrictions and penalties, and you're moving towards virtual enslavement.
Negative factors: dishonest and fraudulent financial behavior, playing loud music, violating traffic rules, making reservations at restaurants and not showing up, failing to correctly sort your waste, fraudulently using other people's public transportation ID cards
Positive factors, on the other hand, include:
donating blood, donating to charity, volunteering to community services
But the lack of transparency means that what's promised may be different from what's actually done.
Tell that to Liu Hu.
Liu Hu is a journalist in China, writing about censorship and government corruption. Because of his work, Liu has been arrested and fined — and blacklisted. Liu found he was named on a List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement by the Supreme People's Court as "not qualified" to buy a plane ticket, and banned from travelling some train lines, buying property, or taking out a loan.
"There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to," he told The Globe and Mail. "What's really scary is there's nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere."
The US is better in that id can be challenged. However, there are significant difficulties with this in practice[1]. This is still better than the situation in China where there is no legal means to challenge it.
[1] eg, https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2019/01/02/no...
Another case is listed below:
In Xie’s case, he didn’t have time.
“No one notified me that I was on the blacklist. Then court officials detained me, so I had to pay the fine,” he said. Xie is now off the blacklist.
Lawyer Li Xiaolin was also not given advanced notice that he was blacklisted.
In 2014, Li was sued for defamation and lost. A judge ordered Li to make an apology, which he submitted in writing in April 2015. Ten months later, when he was away on a work trip, he was blocked from buying a return flight home to Beijing. That’s when he found out he was blacklisted.
It took him another three weeks before an official told him why.
“The court said my apology was not sincere. I asked officials how they determined what is sincere.” Li said.
Eventually Li wrote a second apology and the court removed him from the blacklist in 2016. Then last year, he tried to get a credit card.
“The bank denied my application. I figured out that the bank might still have my name blacklisted and I was right,” Li said.
The bank updated its records the next day, but by that point, he had spent almost a year to fully clear his name.
“The social credit system gives a very powerful weapon to officials, in a country with very unbalanced relations between citizens and the government,” she said.
For now, Liu is still on the blacklist, which the Chinese state media refers to as the list of “laolai” or deadbeats.
He is still trying to get off it.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/13/social-credit-score-c...
Not sure what that shows...
Some of these things are not like the others.
wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System.
That wiki try to associate every thing related to credit in China to the social credit system, which is terribly wrong.
For example, playing loud music may get you blacklisted by the beijing subway company, not the national credit system.
Violating traffic rules only affects two citie's own credit system, again not the national.
"Making reservations at restaurants and not showing up" is from a news hub site.
Power and control of the population at large. The SCS willbe the largest spy network and intelligence gathering system outside of the NSA.
Through its massive data collection ability, the CCP will be able to spy on dissidents, minority groups such as the Uighur, protestors of the party regime, political opponents, and any other undesirables the party so chooses.
Anyone can be a target and will be punished by disobeying the party rules both financially (directly through the score) and also physically with imprisonment.
What is the Social Credit Score at its most basic level? Control. It is a computer generated prison built to keep people under control in order to change a once free human being into a slave.
We have no data on people with this spectrum of mental illness because they do not report themselves. Estimations on the number of sociopaths in the wild are anywhere between 1% to 5 % of the population.
If this social credit score is able to limit the damage these people can cause during their lifetime I would say the experiment is successful.
"Enemy of the State (1998)" but as mundane everyday reality, not a blockbuster movie and with your jelaous neighbours reporting you for anything and everything.
"It will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step"
> Make the goals to get the most profit from the least investment into the work force, coerce their productivity with increasing restrictions and penalties, and you're moving towards virtual enslavement.
This seems like the polar opposite of my perception. If one looks at statistics [1], or simply spends a few hours (or years, as I have) watching China based YouTube vloggers, there seems to be an unmistakable and rapid increase of the common man's wealth and material well being. I can't really think of any observation I've experienced that contradicts this apparent trend.
What data sources are you using?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-buil...
There does indeed seem to be signs of oppression of ethnic minorities in China, but to me this is a relatively unrelated anomaly on a statistical basis compared to the general question of where do the fruits of labour in China go: to those doing the work, or to the ruling class.
Most of what I have observed suggests that there is a "rising tide lifts all boats" phenomenon underway, although determining the degree to which the distribution is consistent with what is "fair" is obviously problematic, as with any other country.
As for the Uighur & Tibetan situation, this is starting to look like it's going to be just one of those very unfortunate facts of life, but my intuition is that once the distinctness of these cultures is sufficiently eliminated (wild guess: 20-100 years), the difference of treatment will be relatively minimal, provided standard of living continues to rise across the board. But then who knows, anything can happen.
The approach the government is taking there is certainly heavy-handed, but I think we should be careful not to fetishize their poverty as something to be preserved.
Are you sure? It doesn't mean it by semantic definition, so is there another ~authoritative source you're referring to that establishes that meaning?
Rural ethnic minorities in China live a life that consists solely of "third world subsistence farming with no health or dental care", or they do not. And then on top of this is the question of why, specifically, is it plausibly because they are ethnic minorities, as in: no non-minority Chinese exist that have a "third world subsistence farming with no health or dental care".
Is this not the point of contention?
I do not have this deep of knowledge of on the ground reality in China. Is there a data source of some kind we can turn to to resolve this uncertainty?
It's not because they're minorities in an American sense, the government there actually gives ethnic minorities a lot of extra privileges, they get to have more kids, etc. There's a form of affirmative action where they're "bussed" to other areas, which of course gets reported in the west as yet another form of repression. Not speaking Chinese is going to be an obstacle to getting ahead in general.
I don't have a cite, this is all based on conversations I've had and what I've seen of rural reality in China (haven't been to Tibet, Xinjiang or Inner Mongolia, but I've seen some really crappy lifestyles for rural poor Han Chinese. And they thought things were going great! Much better than in past decades).
Ethnic cleansing with helping of re-education camps and forced labor are just "unfortunate facts of life." Just give them 20-100 years and nobody will remember anyway...
Well, that's certainly a take on how things are going there.
Rising tides can't life boats filled with dead and forgotten people, but sure, citizens who follow the strict and draconian credit system are stacking bank, amirite?
It is indeed, I imagine you have your own. My prediction will be correct, or it will be incorrect. As much as people enjoy posting heartfelt support on the internet, I don't see much happening beyond that. Who is going to come to their aid? The US Government? Bill Gates? You?
As for the rest of my prediction: "...but my intuition is that once the distinctness of these cultures is sufficiently eliminated (wild guess: 20-100 years), the difference of treatment will be relatively minimal, provided standard of living continues to rise across the board."
If this comes to pass, they'll be better off than the First Nations people of Canada, who found out today that the Government of Canada once again has found it "necessary" to delay their plans to provide safe drinking water to the communities we forced them into decades ago:
https://news.knowledia.com/CA/en/articles/covid-19-may-delay...
> Rising tides can't life boats filled with dead and forgotten people, but sure, citizens who follow the strict and draconian credit system are stacking bank, amirite?
That seems to be a portion of actual reality, yes. Simultaneously, millions of people are also rising out of poverty at an unprecedented rate, including I would think the ethnic minorities who will gradually have their uniqueness eliminated over time. Whether this is a net benefit to them over time is a matter of opinion, but ultimately unknowable.
This reminds me of this quote:
"the Führer often informed those like Himmler tasked with implementing the Holocaust that extermination should be implemented as “humanely” as possible.... For Hitler, killing “impersonally” was, according to John Toland, synonymous with doing so “without cruelty.”"
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-97999-1_...
The similarity I'd say is that I'm also emotionally detached from the situation (but intellectually attached - I perceive most people to have the opposite combo, fwiw). Differences I see are that I have no influence in the matter, and I have largely the opposite goals of Hitler.
My favorite relevant quote would probably be this one:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
"Moloch is introduced as the answer to a question – C. S. Lewis’ question in Hierarchy Of Philosophers – what does it? Earth could be fair, and all men glad and wise. Instead we have prisons, smokestacks, asylums. What sphinx of cement and aluminum breaks open their skulls and eats up their imagination?
And Ginsberg answers: Moloch does it.
There’s a passage in the Principia Discordia where Malaclypse complains to the Goddess about the evils of human society. “Everyone is hurting each other, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war.”
The Goddess answers: “What is the matter with that, if it’s what you want to do?”
Malaclypse: “But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!”
Goddess: “Oh. Well, then stop.”
The implicit question is – if everyone hates the current system, who perpetuates it? And Ginsberg answers: “Moloch”. It’s powerful not because it’s correct – nobody literally thinks an ancient Carthaginian demon causes everything – but because thinking of the system as an agent throws into relief the degree to which the system isn’t an agent."
-------
I think this is a good estimate of what's going on. If everyone hates the system (maybe not unanimous, but likely pretty close), then instead of constantly fighting with people whose goals (as opposed to implementation preferences) are likely little different than our own, why don't we put down our weapons, come up with a mutually acceptable compromise, and make it happen?
And I think the answer to that question is: because we can't. Not that we don't want to, or "won't", but because we can't.
But it's just an armchair theory, odds are I don't have any better clue than anyone else.
That, is also, Moloch, of course. But if we can’t but fight, at least fight the good fight.
Perhaps I am.
> Over a lifetime, you could have an impact on China, through sanctions or whatever.
The status quo ("democracy", sanctions, "diplomatic talks") is what got us into this position in the first place. It's how the game is played.
> That, is also, Moloch, of course. But if we can’t but fight, at least fight the good fight.
What does the good fight consist of?
The seeming inevitable isn't. Things change.
> this is starting to look like it's going to be just one of those very unfortunate facts of life
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Sometimes some things change, sometimes they don't. It depends how you look at it. For example: there is change, and then there is rate of change. The latter typically doesn't get a lot of attention.
I wonder how the Uighurs look at it, or the millions of downtrodden and disenfranchised people now and throughout history - differently than IT folks like you and I who have the luxury of waxing philosophical about such things.
> The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
I would say that this is both profoundly true, but also little more than a catchy slogan to reinforce the egos of people who think they are good.
You're completely right. The purpose of such a system shall be used to maintain power but that's not the sole purpose of such a system. More than just benefiting the ruling class China wants to be better than and more powerful than the United States of America in every possible way. In order to do this their policies must benefit the working class as well as it is the working class that will be responsible for building a society that supasses the United States economically and technologically.
It's naive to think that China sole purpose is just to have a fat happy ruling class... as the status quo pretty much supports that already. Like all humans no one stays satisfied forever and China's ruling class wants to be better than the United States. Given the state of things China of course has ambitions far greater than your presumptions.
That being said there is a more immediate purpose for the system that involves changing people's' behavior so that they can avoid the tragedy of the commons. If you ever been to China you'll notice that people in general just don't care about the common good. Such systems stop people from pissing on the sidewalk or shitting out in an open field, spitting everywhere and littering cigarette butts wherever they please as this is much of what chinese people do without care.
Improving society is not just a gimmicky cover for consolidating power. It is an actual goal to be used in conjunction with consolidating power. Chinas' goal is to build a happy society that is more affluent and happy than the US but has less freedoms.
A similar system has already been tried in another country successfully. They used extreme punishment in place of extreme monitoring. See Singapore. In Singapore you can get the death penalty for possessing weed, not kidding.
It seems this is the case if you're Han Chinese only.
Not only non-Han Chinese face oppression (Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians [1]), but lower class Han are also not well treated [2].
Point is, we should not judge the progress of China based on its most affluent class. Things are much more messy behind the cover.
And when we try to see the full picture, China is less and less a role model for others to follow.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/world/asia/china-protest-...
Race is just a correlation, the causative factor is the culture associated with the race as practitioners of falun gong (who include the Han people) are also targeted.
In America, I have the freedom to brainwash people into following Scientology, in China such cults cannot exist. The line of demarcation is blurry, when does a religion become a cult? How is the fantasmic stories of walking on water or coming back from the dead in christianity make it any different from scientology?
When China sees serfdom as part of the Tibetan culture do they label it backwards and raze the entire belief system or do they leave it alone? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/tibet-...
Are you saying that the Chinese government force abortion by culture and behavior [1], not by race?
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7g8m8/forced-abortions-a...
In general if you live in the big cities but follow the cultural standards you will not be touched regardless of your race.
This also happens in America today
Citation?
If you want something different, go somewhere with a smaller population where you can afford that luxury. Quantity versus quality.
Societies where the elites are only interested in stealing everything they can take look like Nigeria (or Mississippi): a tiny sliver of people living in luxury while the rest of the population lives in permanent, abject, squalor.
In contrast, median living standards in China have improved dramatically in living memory. In many cases, the transformation has literally been from mud huts to skyscrapers. The kind of wealth distribution that supported this transformation would not have been possible if China's elites were only interested in self enrichment; if they were, they would have taken the wealth for themselves.
Obviously, China's human rights policies have no redeeming qualities, but its economic policies have benefited the average Chinese citizen. Credit where it's due.
It's a small absolute cost to take someone from mud hut to concrete box, but the relative economic multiples for those in charge, multiplied by a few hundred million, are massive. It's also much harder to foment revolution when you've been lifted out of poverty in a generation (even if it's due!)
A state sanctioned one having more immediate effects and denial of service just is too convenient for us to express our opinion about. But as the article itself and commenters mention, credit bureaus in a variety of countries have the same effect.
We should use China's system to galvanize support in addressing our own private sector systems at home.
- a person has access to their file
- there are ways to correct mistakes on file, should any be found
- scoring algorithm is more or less known
Also:
- it's limited in scope to financial accounts.
The end goal of the Chinese system appears to be to rate you on nearly every aspect of your life, which is quite different.
So from the US point of view, a "social credit system" seems backwards in a "been there, tried that" kind of thing.
As far as i know, even if you have a terrible US credit score, you can still buy a train/plane/bus ticket to travel outside of your city, you can still buy mobile phone contracts, start a business, buy property, send your children to a private school etc etc.
The SCS in China will punish the individual by restricting these things.
I don't know how anyone can say this with a straight face.
In the west you can be bankrupt and still buy a first class airline ticket or go to a concert or do damn near anything else so long as you aren't using credit to do it.
> rebuts with a different result
I elaborated enough on what circumstances dictate outcomes. You might have missed the point, which was that we can do things differently and can use this as an opportunity for introspection to make it happen differently.
And again, I am echoing sentiments from the article, so if you think I'm way off base then the whole article is invalid too and you should comment at the top level instead of whatever hairs you want to split with me.
What's astonishing to me is how we in the West have created this metaphysical alternative reality where poor people are taught to think they have the chance to live in mansions or fly on luxury airlines, if it weren't for the fact that they're poor, of course.
In contrast to the cruel Chinese, we also have majestic legal equality, where the millionaires and the poor are equally punished for sleeping on park benches
> you meet many bankrupt people on luxury cruises and first class airline tickets?
Donald J. Trump
The only logical alternative would be that millionaires and poor to be unequally punished for sleeping on park benches.
How's that better?
I don't need to sleep on a park bench because I own a house with beds, so punishing me equally for it isn't really equality. Ironically I bet I actually could take a nap on a park bench with less chance of the cops being called than a homeless person anyway.
Yeah but why would a millionaire do that? That's not majestic, more like unequal exposure
Most other countries have similarly "majestic" legal equality, but again, you're not going to find people with a home to go to sleeping in park benches. China is hardly special in that department.
Yes I was being sarcastic, that's the point. Abstract notions of equality are meaningless. We can pride ourselves on the rule of law in comparison to China, but the law already is such that it predetermines who gets the stick and who doesn't.
Same is true with the social credit system. We may claim we have some sort of abstract choice, but when your neighbour installs their ring camera looking into your living room, and your healthcare premiums goes up if you don't put that Apple smartwatch on, there's no actual choice.
It's exactly that China is hardly different, just more blunt about where our social and technical engineering leads us.
It is quite common for the affluent in the West to have to declare bankruptcy for business reasons, but still maintain their affluent lifestyle through other sources of income that remain unaffected. That bankruptcy filing limits their access to credit, but it doesn’t affect their ability to purchase travel.
Credit is almost a necessity in American life, even if it is theoretically possible to buy a house paid in cash up-front. Doing so would be stupid because of opportunity costs on that cash.
Apple now offers 0% interest financing. This isn't really a matter of using credit / paying in cash as it is literally free money that a class of people who may not have credit will not have access to.
If I do something bad, like file for bankruptcy, it is wiped off of the "private sector credit systems" after seven years. China's scorekeeping is perpetual. There is no forgiveness. No second chances.
Another important difference is that in the West, being penalized for things like now showing up for a dinner reservation are opt-in. You choose to make a reservation through Open Table in order to get points. Part of that contract is that you will honor your reservations. Nobody forces you to use Open Table.
credit bureaus in a variety of countries have the same effect
Which Western credit bureaus are tracking charitable donations? Blood donations? The times someone plays music too loudly? The times someone throws a banana peel into the recycling bin?
This is in a special category of "not even wrong".
1) There's no singular Social Credit System at the moment, there are a dozen trials of different systems in different cities and by different corporations. As such, there's no singular scorekeeping, perpetual or otherwise.
2) In most of the experiments, not only can people get out from under with time, they can accelerate it by doing things that are deemed 'socially positive'.
We've got our own problems that need to be fixed before we start governing the Chinese people without representation. They certainly have a lot of tea in China to dump into the waters.
Also their scope is limited: if I show that I can't be trusted with credit, the result of my low credit score is that it becomes harder for me to get more credit.
With China's social credit system, me habitually making restaurant reservations and then bailing on them, or defaulting on loans, can result in my being denied the ability to fly on a plane. These things have nothing to do with each other, and the punishment does not fit the "crime". If I bail on restaurant reservations all the time, I should just not be allowed to make restaurant reservations. If I default on loans, I shouldn't be able to get more loans.
I agree that the private sector credit systems could stand to be improved a lot, and there are a lot of side consequences for being unable to obtain credit (that tend to disproportionately affect certain types of people), but that is nowhere near the same thing.
Is this really true in the US? Increasingly I've been surprised at all the places that want to pull credit. Cellphone companies, electric company, applying to rent an apt, even HR departments.
Most of these have workarounds. You can buy prepaid cell phone plans (usually cheaper and easier than postpaid!). Electric companies will let anyone open up an account with a deposit.
If you're on a cellular plan where you get the phone free/cheap and then pay it off over the next year or two, that's a creditor relationship. Postpaid plans mean that you pay your bill at the end of the month, so if you fail to pay, the phone company has lost money on you. Prepaid plans, IIRC, usually don't require a credit check because you pay up-front.
Even for the electric company, there are often laws against shutting off your service because of non-payment, since electricity is considered so fundamental to our lives. And again, like cellular can be, it's a post-paid service.
Renting an apartment isn't quite so obviously a credit thing, but in many jurisdictions it's difficult and expensive to evict a tenant, even for non-payment.
Jobs too.
If people aren't that familiar with SCS, this should bring them up to speed. I understand that this SCS is not yet fully active and in varying parts being tested throughout the country, but, at some point it will be ready and go live nationally.
What's really worrying is that the SCS is in some parts, bits and pieces already in Western countries and there is a tendency for this privacy encroachment and surveillance creep to continue in the name of "safety" and "national security".
We should be ever more vigilant and actively oppose this type of draconian nightmare that George Orwell envisioned in 1984 and which is being perfected by the CCP and brother #1 Xi Jinping.
And, paradoxically enough, in the name of suppression of foreign interference.
On the other hand, in a democracy that accepts and markets social score is pretty bad as well. This black mirror episode captures the social score society really well https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/
One might say, oh this is just scoring minor misdemeanor-type activity. Misdemeanors are also only as good as the law classifying crime. Here are some weird US misdemeanors https://www.teenvogue.com/story/7-federal-misdemeanors-worse...
I'm no fan of US politics. But I am strongly for the principle that the government serves the people and not the other way around. And in that, I don't want the government )or some bureaucrats) deciding the future of a human.
You make it sound like their current leader, who’s no better than Hitler, isn’t corrupt and incompetent af. His incompetence just caused a pandemic that has killed millions of people.
But you’re right, we have a million deaths that can directly be linked to the Wuhan Virus.
Holy sh*t. That's some straight up Orwellian thought, there.
I pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with Liberty and Justice for all.
* People will not behave "acceptably" without constant social monitoring. This is similar to the Puritan belief that, if you didn't live in a town where your neighbors could watch you, you could be assumed to be worshiping Satan.
* That the best modern form of that social monitoring is 24/7 surveillance with merits and demerits for trivial things.
I wonder if the same can be said within China?
It's opaque workings still concern civil libertarians tremendously. There's 50,000 on the list. That seems excesive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#Controversy_and_cr...
Those “share” buttons on web sites allow the big aggregators to connect accounts on various sites.
> Among the complaints about the No Fly List is the use of credit reports in calculating the risk score. In response to the controversy, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials said in 2005 that they would not use credit scores to determine passengers' risk score and that they would comply with all rights guaranteed by the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution.
It used to be a feature; they turned it off (reportedly). How hard would it be for them to silently re-enable it? How hard would it be to factor in facet Y which correlates with facet X (credit score)?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#Controversy_and_...
China has access to WeChat.
FB scans and processes all FB messenger traffic as does Twitter DMs (unlike, say, iMessage or, currently, SMS). They use the info for the usual customization, profiling, and ad sales. I don’t believe they sell the actual data itself but really there’s no reason why not, or why they couldn’t sell scoring info to the big guys.
And now I think of it, FB, Google, and Amazon could easily buy those bureaux (each could buy one) to supercharge the rating system in both directions. It would be like Google’s purchase of doubleclick.
So for example, private sector info is used by ICE to hunt down undocumented workers and imprison them. The end result is that armed agents put people in (private sector) prisons, no different from other countries in end result.
But in the US it is preferred that such systems be assembled in the private sector and not restricted in a way that government oversight would be.
"States may have additional consumer reporting laws that extend beyond what the FCRA provides."
(https://www.lexingtonlaw.com/blog/credit-101/does-the-govern...)
See also https://www.usa.gov/credit-reports
People will get arrested by storing an image, a slogan, or flag.
You do not have right to conduce bailment or see your lawyer.
All those tools or systems be a powerful weapon to supervising the mind in their national.
Edit: Just to clarify I'm not a fan of a system like this. I can see it going wrong and being abused in pretty much any country in the world.
The problem with governments is size and reach. Governments attempt and do usually keep growing. The government ends up with laws like: https://library.municode.com/ar/little_rock/codes/code_of_or...
Why does a government care if you honk a horn near a sandwich shop after 9pm? How many places also make adultery illegal? How about ever decreasing speed limits? https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/107383/coronavirus-ci...
Government wants to grow, but how many of these laws are really enforced? However, if you had a social control system. It might be much more possible.
That's the problem with robot cops. Which are coming eventually. The size of the police force will increase and the government will start to be able to enforce these laws. There will be a robot outside of every sandwich shop and you will be punished for honking your horn.
>> Sec. 18-54. - Sounding of horns at sandwich shops.
>> No person shall sound the horn on a vehicle at any place where cold drinks or sandwiches are served after 9:00 p.m.
>> (Code 1961, § 25-74)
Governments don't go around passing weird laws like the above for no reason.
I betcha $1 that there's a good story behind that ordinance. There usually is in cases like that. Some thing with contract terms. Probably someone was doing something obnoxious, which was technically legal under then-current law. The local government did what it was supposed to do, and solved the problem (in this case, with a narrow ordinance).
That's an example, but the reality is that laws are tremendously extensive. Yet generally unenforced. When the government can start enforcing. Government will grow even larger and more specific.
I have some doubt about that.
> That's an example, but the reality is that laws are tremendously extensive. Yet generally unenforced. When the government can start enforcing. Government will grow even larger and more specific.
I'm pretty confident that the current cost of the above-cited ordinance is zero, and at one point in the past the value it provided was a small positive.
I just Googled the law, and it shows up on a bunch of lists "dumb law" lists. It's way too specific and obscure to probably find any reasoning behind it without going through decades of meeting minutes of the Little Rock City Council.
Here's another one that showed up on many of those lists:
> 3. bear wrestling matches are prohibited. – Alabama (Acts 1996, No. 96-468, p. 581, §1.)
Sounds pretty dumb, right? However, Bear wrestling matches are (or were) a thing, and it seems like it came to be (rightly) considered a form of animal mistreatment:
https://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/national/story/2019/au...
> Bears used in wrestling were usually defanged and declawed, as well as kept in small trailers and fed poor diets, according to previous reports....
> Even at the start of the 1992 legislative season, bear wrestling was still reportedly legal in some parishes. But by the end of it, the activity was outlawed in every corner of Louisiana by the means of state law with little debate from lawmakers.
> "It was just a poor form of entertainment that was at the expense of the animals," Jeff Dorson, Louisiana Humane Society director, told The Times in a 2011 report. Dorson lobbied for the bill in 1992.
> "The state congress was surprisingly sympathetic to the bill after we showed them videotape and pictures of the animals," Dorson said.
> The law came as an addition to the state's cruelty to animals criminal codes, and after three years of complaints on how traveling side show owners were treating their bears.
What I was trying to say in my first post was that it's not the current enforcement. It's just an example of the government becoming too large and the robot police force of the future will use these dead laws to enforce. This will lead to disenfranchisement.
>Sounds pretty dumb, right? However, Bear wrestling matches are (or were) a thing, and it seems like it came to be (rightly) considered a form of animal mistreatment:
Personally I like said bear law. This isn't about silly laws, it's about how unenforced laws have become. The size of government wants to grow, but right now the resources of the law enforcement dictate the size. In the near future the resources of law enforcement will quickly allow growth of government again.
Another example is grass. In many cities it's illegal to have long grass. However, enforcement is non-existent or at least requires someone snitching on you. In the future there will be robot cops who will go around and inspection the entire city on a regular basis providing fines.
Or snow, you have laws normally that say, you have until 10am to clear the snow from the city's sidewalks and keep it free of snow and ice for the remaining day. You are typically in constant violation if you arent actively cleaning it all day long.
Out of curiousity, do you think there will be cities that have robots that cut everyone's grass or shovel to snow? Or will they be punitive with $500 fines.
> ...This isn't about silly laws, it's about how unenforced laws have become. The size of government wants to grow, but right now the resources of the law enforcement dictate the size. In the near future the resources of law enforcement will quickly allow growth of government again.
> Another example is grass. In many cities it's illegal to have long grass. However, enforcement is non-existent or at least requires someone snitching on you. In the future there will be robot cops who will go around and inspection the entire city on a regular basis providing fines.
I think you're making a false assumption that the government is totally unresponsive to its citizens and will engage in infinite make-work enforcement to allow itself to grow maximally even if that means everyone else bears an unbearable burden. IMHO, the existence of these "dumb" laws is actually a disproof of that.
These laws remain on the books because it's basically free to leave them there. Once they start to become a burden, they'll be rewritten to be less onerous or removed completely.
I'm also 100% confident that, in our lifetimes, we won't be seeing AGI cops diligently enforcing the letter of the laws all the time.
I think social credit systems are wrong, the moral behavior shouldn't be tradeable. But let's face it, almost all societies have them, and they have many flaws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System#Social_cr...
What will happen however if automation takes over most of production and we reach abundance societies? The need for such systems even in an autocracy like China will be diminished. But then i guess there will be other manufactured ideals
Most articles do a pretty bad job at separating CCP's ambitions from the actual implementation.
Basically any data driven tracking effort in China will be presumed to be part of the "social credit system" effort. But one has to understand that doesn't mean they are actually part of a coherently connected and integrated system.
Many articles often talk about there being a "score" in the system but they're just talking about a score in one of the many systems out there. Usually they mean Alibaba's.
This is blatant "What's aboutism"
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”
-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Everyone clapped them on the back for it, maybe YC funded one or two.
This is a weak equivalency, akin to saying they're equivalent to school grading systems, simply because they assess a level of service in regards to studying.
FICO is a financial measure meant to assess risk for certain financial transactions - the domain is pretty limited.