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Sure, they're a pretty successful company. I bet it's a decent buy long term. Though, if you use ethics in some form to guide your investment choice, you may

Sure, they're a pretty successful company. I bet it's a decent buy long term. Though, if you use ethics in some form to guide your investment choice, you may want to consider whether supporting creators of social credit systems conflicts with your ethics. Maybe it doesn't, but.. it's worth consideration if you are guided by such things.

chrischen 8y ago
There’s a lot of things wrong where I live (The USA), including guantanamo bay, invasion of Iraq. I may not support any of those things, but I still contribute to taxes and function in society. Choosing to freeze oneself is entirely impractical, even if some parts of one’s society is immoral. That being said, the ethics you mention is not universal. The social credit system may be controversial, but generally a detached western viewpoint is hardly one who can speak to the morality of it on behalf of Chinese people. The only thing objectively inmoral is imposing one’s own moral standards and viewpoints on others.
- phyller 8y ago
  "The only thing objectively inmoral is imposing one’s own moral standards and viewpoints on others." So the only really moral thing is to a) think that there are no universal moral standards b) universally apply this moral standard of no universal moral standards. You have a great mind to be able to hold both of these thoughts at once, and be able to sincerely express them both in a single sentence. I assume then that you would not have a problem with an Afghani policeman who recently immigrated to your country raping your kids, because that is morally acceptable in his culture [1]? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/afghanistan-military-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/afghanistan-mi...
  - SpecialistEMT 8y ago
    Is it really morally acceptable in their country?
- celim307 8y ago
  Isn't imposing moral standards exactly what China's social credit score is doing?
- it_learnses 8y ago
  Not supporting those things and being vocal about it is entirely allowed in USA, but not allowed in China. I think your self-contradicting view would change pretty fast if you moved back to China and your social credit somehow took a hit and you couldn't get a job or use transportation as a result.
ww520 8y ago
I have no stand on "social credit systems" since I don't know enough about them. On the other hand, I really hate people virtue signaling especially with questionable stands just so they could feel morally superior. I'm going to buy tcehy tomorrow just because.
- heroprotagonist 8y ago
  I went out of my way to couch that in 'if this plays a role in your decisions' to try to avoid this impression. Some people are straight looking at the financial figures, and others have an ethical component to their investment. The comment was for that second audience. That said, I'm not sure how viable this third approach is, of basing investment decisions upon the emotional response to perceived interpretation of a single stranger's anonymous internet comment. On the surface it looks somewhat like an equivalent of including ethics in the decision making process, if one were to boil ethics down into simply an emotional response. I'm sure a lot of people see things that upset them as 'wrong' and things they approve of as 'right', without evaluation of any independent standard. But however one interprets ethics, it doesn't really factor into this third process because it's not based on the company, it's based on a reaction to an individual (or more likely, a categorization of an individual). This is just putting your money where your 'hate' is (perceived virtue signaling by stranger), without consideration of the company. This type of decision making process opens the potential for a lot of manipulation of the decision maker. Maybe in a few years an advertising program will pick up on this in some form of behavioral analysis of the decision maker's internet activity. Perhaps it interprets similar comments and then tracks it to actual decisions, creating an archetype of the personality that can be driven in such a manner. Then it starts the targeting. Maybe at first it promotes some posts but not others into the decision maker's field of view to ensure an appropriate pre-disposition. EG, if virtue signaling is the trigger, it identifies and promotes these to put the decision maker into a rebellious state of mind. Then it forces the trigger with some specific advice designed to gain a similar reaction to what it has seen from this decision maker in the past. Not to bring social credit back into it, but by way of comparison, the above is only a mildly dark pattern in algorithmically driven social and psychological manipulation. It's also probably a lot less likely to occur in the next decade.
mac01021 8y ago
Does divestment from a corporation actually provide an incentive for the corporation to change its behavior? Maybe if you were boycotting their IPO. But the mechanism of influence is much less clear if you're just declining to buy their stock secondhand on the exchanges...

chrischen 8y ago

There’s a lot of things wrong where I live (The USA), including guantanamo bay, invasion of Iraq. I may not support any of those things, but I still contribute to taxes and function in society. Choosing to freeze oneself is entirely impractical, even if some parts of one’s society is immoral. That being said, the ethics you mention is not universal. The social credit system may be controversial, but generally a detached western viewpoint is hardly one who can speak to the morality of it on behalf of Chinese people. The only thing objectively inmoral is imposing one’s own moral standards and viewpoints on others.

phyller 8y ago
"The only thing objectively inmoral is imposing one’s own moral standards and viewpoints on others." So the only really moral thing is to a) think that there are no universal moral standards b) universally apply this moral standard of no universal moral standards. You have a great mind to be able to hold both of these thoughts at once, and be able to sincerely express them both in a single sentence. I assume then that you would not have a problem with an Afghani policeman who recently immigrated to your country raping your kids, because that is morally acceptable in his culture [1]? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/afghanistan-military-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/afghanistan-mi...
- SpecialistEMT 8y ago
  Is it really morally acceptable in their country?
celim307 8y ago
Isn't imposing moral standards exactly what China's social credit score is doing?
it_learnses 8y ago
Not supporting those things and being vocal about it is entirely allowed in USA, but not allowed in China. I think your self-contradicting view would change pretty fast if you moved back to China and your social credit somehow took a hit and you couldn't get a job or use transportation as a result.

ww520 8y ago

I have no stand on "social credit systems" since I don't know enough about them. On the other hand, I really hate people virtue signaling especially with questionable stands just so they could feel morally superior. I'm going to buy tcehy tomorrow just because.

heroprotagonist 8y ago
I went out of my way to couch that in 'if this plays a role in your decisions' to try to avoid this impression. Some people are straight looking at the financial figures, and others have an ethical component to their investment. The comment was for that second audience. That said, I'm not sure how viable this third approach is, of basing investment decisions upon the emotional response to perceived interpretation of a single stranger's anonymous internet comment. On the surface it looks somewhat like an equivalent of including ethics in the decision making process, if one were to boil ethics down into simply an emotional response. I'm sure a lot of people see things that upset them as 'wrong' and things they approve of as 'right', without evaluation of any independent standard. But however one interprets ethics, it doesn't really factor into this third process because it's not based on the company, it's based on a reaction to an individual (or more likely, a categorization of an individual). This is just putting your money where your 'hate' is (perceived virtue signaling by stranger), without consideration of the company. This type of decision making process opens the potential for a lot of manipulation of the decision maker. Maybe in a few years an advertising program will pick up on this in some form of behavioral analysis of the decision maker's internet activity. Perhaps it interprets similar comments and then tracks it to actual decisions, creating an archetype of the personality that can be driven in such a manner. Then it starts the targeting. Maybe at first it promotes some posts but not others into the decision maker's field of view to ensure an appropriate pre-disposition. EG, if virtue signaling is the trigger, it identifies and promotes these to put the decision maker into a rebellious state of mind. Then it forces the trigger with some specific advice designed to gain a similar reaction to what it has seen from this decision maker in the past. Not to bring social credit back into it, but by way of comparison, the above is only a mildly dark pattern in algorithmically driven social and psychological manipulation. It's also probably a lot less likely to occur in the next decade.

mac01021 8y ago

Does divestment from a corporation actually provide an incentive for the corporation to change its behavior? Maybe if you were boycotting their IPO. But the mechanism of influence is much less clear if you're just declining to buy their stock secondhand on the exchanges...