China is implementing a social credit system which further advances the big brother authoritarian control over people's lives. Will this social experiment in China proved to be the testing ground for the rest of the world, such as a future one world government?
The social credit system will judge the trustworthiness of individuals in a society. Daily activities are monitored and evaluated with a positive or negative rating. Where you are, what you do, what you say, what you buy, hours spent doing things like watching TV or playing video games, your ability to pay bills and taxes, financial responsibility, etc. It's like the site Yelp, but reviews are done by other people, it's the state that's watching over your shoulder like a nanny or parent that will restrict or allow you to do certain things.
Not only are you rated individually, but you're also ranked against the entire population to determine how well you fit in relative to everyone else. Your ratio will determine if you are eligible for a job, get a mortgage, get a loan, rent a car, where your kids can go to school, what Internet speed you'll have, what access to restaurants you have, and whether you have the right to access public travel.
The system monitors what you do in many areas of life. If trust is broken in one area, it affects your position in all areas where restrictions can be applied everywhere else. If you make a late payment, if you make trouble in a public place, if you make sexist comments or utter profanities, your rating will be negatively affected and reverberate throughout the whole social credit system to impact your rights and privileges everywhere else. Those who become discredited will hardly be able to do anything in society as they become blacklisted from being able to do certain things.
The context of the situation isn't taken in account in these so-called trust algorithms. You might miss a payment for a bill because you're in a hospital instead of actually being a freeloader or poorly responsible person. The infractions are minor as well, such as having your parked bike partially on a footpath, or making an apology that is deemed fake and insincere.
The social credit system was planned for deployment by 2020, but beginning this May 2018, people who have a low rank in the social credit system could begin being banned from buying plane or train tickets for a certain period of time, even up to a year of not being able to travel. More than 7,000,000 people are on the social credit blacklist so far.
This is a chilling move towards Orwell's 1984 mixed with positive reinforcement reward systems like achievements in games. People will be living in fear of failure to conform to social norms. If you do "good" and prove yourself "trustworthy", you can get rewarded with special privileges. If you don't live up to standards imposed by the central authority, you get punished and basic rights to use things in society getting taken from you. Everything ends up being a privilege that is bestowed by the "good grace" of the state.
The level of freedom we have is counterbalanced by the level control over our lives, where we might seem to be taking 1 step forward, but often that comes with taking two steps back. Things become more free in one area, but overall there is more tightening restriction in the aggregate.
It's not just China. The USA saw the Patriot Act in the past 2 decades. Canada, the UK and other countries have so-called "hate speech" laws that imprison people for speaking their minds when it goes against what the government wants to allow you to say. They are just thought crime laws for the most part.
References:
- Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens
- China’s Chilling ‘Social Credit’ Blacklist
- China will ban people with poor ‘social credit’ from planes and trains
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