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Minority View Warning!! In a small rural village, when one person misbehaves, everyone knows and punishes the offender with collective actions. That serves as

Minority View Warning!! In a small rural village, when one person misbehaves, everyone knows and punishes the offender with collective actions. That serves as a major deterrent against bad behaviors. This mechanism is weakened by the size of community. Reputational information cannot always travel as far as a person could. The social credit system is a reimplementation of this mechanism from the old days. It can be abused the same way. A village peon who angers the powerful become an outcast regardless of who is in the right.

timavr 8y ago
Reputation is very abstract concept and in the eyes of the beholder. There is no universal reputation metric. In the US there is credit rating system, which everyone used prior to 2008 to determine who is credit worthy. After economy collapsed majority of businesses just completely ignored it because huge chunk of population who still had good jobs just defaulted on their obligations, because their assets were so much underwater.It just made total economic sense to default.
walshemj 8y ago
Unless of course its the village elders/headmen who are doing the oppressing eg the abuse lower case villagers in India face.
zhdc1 8y ago
Does this really happen, though? If you look at incidence rates for violence, prostitution, alcoholism, and other anti-social behaviors, misbehavior tends to decrease over time (in line with urbanization/modernization). Small communities may be better at incentivizing the perception of good behavior, but it's debatable whether this leads to better outcomes, or if it just teaches community members how to hide or ignore transgressions.
zimbatm 8y ago
In that case we should also reproduce the other things that are available in the village, like a shared history that helps with the understanding of the situation. The thing that is scary is the blanket application of rules. This type of system is bound to have issues because it will lose the finesse that individuals can apply to a situation. As usual with bigger, more efficient systems some qualities are lost, and here it's the human touch.
tdb7893 8y ago
A blacklist without context and without the people executing the punishment knowing the person is pretty different from small communities. It captures some of the "small" aspect but completely misses the effects of having a "community". Also my wife grew up in a small town and how judgemental they were is the main reason she is glad not to be there anymore so even if we could recreate how small towns actually work I don't know if we want to.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I think one of the most important considerations for any law of governmental system is to ask yourself not how it could ideally be used, but how it could be used or misused in case when there was a bad player in power. Because government is not objective nor benevolent. It's just a collection of individuals that some might argue self selects to some of the least desirable traits for those of such responsibility and power. And the thing that history has shown time and again is that it's not a question if a government will be corrupted, but when. Take for instance gerrymandering. The system that enables it was created with great intentions. State populations change over time and so the idea is to let politicians, democratically elected, adjust the boundaries of various districts to compensate for changing populations over time. Great idea, but now it's little more than a tool for trying to screw over 'the other side' while bypassing democratic representation so much as possible. Imagine the potential for attacking companies, individuals, or groups with a tool as amorphous as a social credit system. So I do actually agree with you, that if used properly it could really be a quite useful system. But, I would never support such a thing because, sooner or later, it will not be used properly - and the consequences will be dire.

timavr 8y ago

Reputation is very abstract concept and in the eyes of the beholder. There is no universal reputation metric. In the US there is credit rating system, which everyone used prior to 2008 to determine who is credit worthy. After economy collapsed majority of businesses just completely ignored it because huge chunk of population who still had good jobs just defaulted on their obligations, because their assets were so much underwater.It just made total economic sense to default.

walshemj 8y ago

Unless of course its the village elders/headmen who are doing the oppressing eg the abuse lower case villagers in India face.

zhdc1 8y ago

Does this really happen, though? If you look at incidence rates for violence, prostitution, alcoholism, and other anti-social behaviors, misbehavior tends to decrease over time (in line with urbanization/modernization). Small communities may be better at incentivizing the perception of good behavior, but it's debatable whether this leads to better outcomes, or if it just teaches community members how to hide or ignore transgressions.

zimbatm 8y ago

In that case we should also reproduce the other things that are available in the village, like a shared history that helps with the understanding of the situation. The thing that is scary is the blanket application of rules. This type of system is bound to have issues because it will lose the finesse that individuals can apply to a situation. As usual with bigger, more efficient systems some qualities are lost, and here it's the human touch.

tdb7893 8y ago

A blacklist without context and without the people executing the punishment knowing the person is pretty different from small communities. It captures some of the "small" aspect but completely misses the effects of having a "community". Also my wife grew up in a small town and how judgemental they were is the main reason she is glad not to be there anymore so even if we could recreate how small towns actually work I don't know if we want to.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

I think one of the most important considerations for any law of governmental system is to ask yourself not how it could ideally be used, but how it could be used or misused in case when there was a bad player in power. Because government is not objective nor benevolent. It's just a collection of individuals that some might argue self selects to some of the least desirable traits for those of such responsibility and power. And the thing that history has shown time and again is that it's not a question if a government will be corrupted, but when. Take for instance gerrymandering. The system that enables it was created with great intentions. State populations change over time and so the idea is to let politicians, democratically elected, adjust the boundaries of various districts to compensate for changing populations over time. Great idea, but now it's little more than a tool for trying to screw over 'the other side' while bypassing democratic representation so much as possible. Imagine the potential for attacking companies, individuals, or groups with a tool as amorphous as a social credit system. So I do actually agree with you, that if used properly it could really be a quite useful system. But, I would never support such a thing because, sooner or later, it will not be used properly - and the consequences will be dire.