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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

Like the article mentions, private sector credit systems have the same or similar result in dictating outcomes, but as long as its not from the state, nobody in the west will care about it. Which is very weird because it is exactly how people end up living in worse neighborhoods even if they have enough money to pay rent elsewhere, leading to worse and worse outcomes and no way to change that.

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.

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private sector credit systems have the same or similar result in dictating outcomes, but as long as its not from the state, nobody in the west will care about it

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?

> China's scorekeeping is perpetual. There is no forgiveness. No second chances.

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'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

I saw a documentary a year ago and it looked like in one of the credit schemes people literally just "donated money" to increase their scores, so you can improve your score... but it also looked kind of like bribery with more steps (esp if there's charity vetting).

>private sector credit systems have the same or similar result in dictating outcomes

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.

> says same or similar result

> 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.

you meet many bankrupt people on luxury cruises and first class airline tickets?

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

Oooh because of recent news, I have to take this bait!

> you meet many bankrupt people on luxury cruises and first class airline tickets?

Donald J. Trump

Bankrupt people? No. People who have declared bankruptcy multiple times? Absolutely.

> where the millionaires and the poor are equally punished for sleeping on park benches

The only logical alternative would be that millionaires and poor to be unequally punished for sleeping on park benches.

How's that better?

There's also the alternative of not punishing it at all, because they're just using a first-come-first-serve public resource when they have no better alternative.

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.

> we also have majestic legal equality, where the millionaires and the poor are equally punished for sleeping on park benches

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.

>Yeah but why would a millionaire do that? That's not majestic, more like unequal exposure

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.

> you meet many bankrupt people on luxury cruises and first class airline tickets?

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.

Just because the method of oppression is different doesn't mean we are free from the same class of oppression.

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.

Let's be real, if credit didn't exist only rich people would be able to afford things like an education or property. Sure, we can talk about it being out of control with things like student loans and auto loans but a system that is being abused doesn't necessitate the abolishment of the system all together. That would be like saying that no one can ever get married because you had an abusive partner. The situation is messed up, but the root of the issue is not in the system, it is in the abusive partner. Maybe we can iterate on the system to reduce the ability to abuse, but now we're talking something different.

I may not care for Experian et al., but I do like that they can't send me and my family to a concentration camp to be re-educated. The difference between the government and the private sector, is the government has a monopoly on violence.

They won't need to do that. They can just ruin your credit because of your skin color (based on models influenced by systematic racism). That's if you haven't been shot or harassed by cops trained to bias against people like you.

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.

A standard US credit score system may seem to be similar, but there are some important differences:

- 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

> A standard US credit score system may seem to be similar, but there are some important differences:

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.

If you look at the history of the US credit system, it used to be about other aspects of like (a bank employee factored in if you went to church, were an alcoholic, etc) and it resulted in low access to credit, especially to minorities. That it eventually became regulated and limited to the financial domain was actually a huge feature of the credit system in America that unlocked a lot of good things.

So from the US point of view, a "social credit system" seems backwards in a "been there, tried that" kind of thing.

Similar as in tomatoes are to potatoes.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXyzpMDtpSE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evBzPwCdeHI

Private sector credit systems allow you to examine your record and appeal to get incorrect information corrected, with a legal framework in place that ensures the credit bureau actually acts on your complaints.

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.

> Also their scope is limited

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.

These are examples of things that involve a creditor relationship. You usually postpay your phone and electric bills; even though you prepay your rent, in practice the eviction process is so slow that landlords are effectively on the hook for several months' rent.

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.

With the exception of the HR department, those other people/groups do have an interest in ensuring that you'll pay your bills on time.

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.

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.

Jobs too.

Private sector credit systems provide layers of indirection in the Western democracies. Add to that mix: surveillance capitalism and third-party doctrine. Result: the same deadly cocktail that people living in authoritarian regimes experience!

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