Posted on 11/13/2017 12:23:15 PM PST by Fitzy_888
Take George Orwell’s "1984." Now sprinkle in that episode of "Black Mirror" where characters live in a world in which every aspect of their lives is dominated by ratings.
That’s one way to think about the Social Credit System, a plan that the Chinese government will make mandatory for all its citizens by 2020.
It’s like a credit score system, but instead of just financial information, this one will also pull together a person's political leanings, purchase history and even their social interactions to calculate their "trust score."
Chinese officials say it’s a way to influence their citizens’ behavior to benefit society and move their country forward, but others think it’s just the latest step in the country’s long history of state surveillance.
Rachel Botsman has written about China’s Social Credit System in her book "Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart."
The World spoke to her about what the plan could look like in 2020.
How a person’s rating could be calculated:
The Social Credit System — I guess we would probably call it, like, a "National Trust Score" — will look at different dimensions of a person's life. So things that you might expect, like whether you pay your bills on time or your mortgage. But also your purchasing patterns, things that you say on social media and whether those things conforms with the government. Where it gets, I think, very 1984, is it will look at the patterns and the behaviors of your friends and your social connections as well.
The kind of behavior that could bring a person’s score down:
Well I think there's behavior that you'd expect — if you make a fraudulent payment or something like that — but then there are things that are more subtle. For example, if you buy work shoes or [diapers], you could be seen as a responsible citizen and your score might go up. But if you're buying lots of video games your score will maybe go down, because people would think that you're lazy. If you happen to post something on Tiananmen Square, that's likely to negatively impact your score. This goes beyond the way we think about traditional credit scores, and really gets into your character and behaviors in a way that is quite frightening.
The potential perks of having a high “trust score,” and the consequences of a low “trust score”:
The benefits are really interesting, everything from being fast-tracked to visas, to getting discounts on hotels, or car rentals, or insurance policies. The part that worries me is in fact the penalties, because if your trust score goes below a certain level, it could impact everything from where your children go to school, to what jobs you can apply for, and the type of mortgage that you can get. Your transgressions, they will follow you forever — it is really a permanent record of your so-called trustworthiness. So your behavior could impact your children or your grandchildren for decades to come. There seems to be no limits, there seems to be no boundaries, as to how far this can go.
The Chinese government’s reasons for implementing the Social Credit Score in 2020:
The government's justification is both economic and social. So the reason why they're saying they need this is because just doing business in China can be hard. You know, when I interviewed people from China on this, they don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, because many people in China do not have traditional credit scores, those sort of traditional gold standards of trust. And it's also so culturally embedded in the way that they live. So they'll say in their grandparents’ generation, [people] knew that the Communist Party had a file on them, but they had no idea what was in that file. This is actually the same system. Digitized, but it's more transparent.
(...)
(Good YouTube video on the subject with speculation that the EU might soon follow.)
China’s Nightmarish Social Credit System
https://youtu.be/idNtUC-ABnY
The Delusional Lying Left and the DNC aren’t far behind.
Who here really believes this isn’t already happening here, secretly, huh..?
Palantir Technologies.
All governments salivate at the thought of complete control of the people. Take this Chinese “rating” system, and couple it with another fond wish of the left, a “cashfree” society. Then they will have the total control they have always wanted, and will be able to take as much money from you as they want, and give it to those who vote for more money.
Wait till we have that here. I’m sure I won’t even score high enough to get “re-education” camp.
How very......’Rat of them.
Fortunately for the elite, most bribes are in cash or in kind.
That's WHOM can you trust! Sheesh, aren't there any editors anymore? And why should I read books that advertise they're written by illiterates?
(Go ahead, use the "N" word!)
I call bullshit on this article. Nonsense.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.