I don’t know enough about the social credit stuff to refute your characterization of it, but a financial credit score very much follows you even if you somehow

I don’t know enough about the social credit stuff to refute your characterization of it, but a financial credit score very much follows you even if you somehow end up with more money. Point is, a credit score often closes avenues by which you could get more money, hence the cyclical and punitive nature of it. The scare quotes of “the greater good” you used for the social credit system can equally be used to characterize credit scores as a way to control people’s financial and employment and living prospects in the interest of the “greater good” of financial markets. I think the idea that markets and the finance sector setting credit scores that have far reaching impacts on people’s lives is somehow categorically different than the state implementing a social credit system that might have similar outcomes isn’t correct. So we should talk about them in similar terms.