6 ms·

This system seems inhumane. I’ll consider supporting a boycott of China if it would help.

by ada1981 8y ago

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
In what way would you boycott China? Refuse to buy or use products made there? How likely do you think this could scale to an impact that would meaningfully impact China's trade? And as horrible as I think the social credit system is, there's an interesting question, as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)?
- mamon 8y ago
  >> what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)? "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
  - thanksDr 8y ago
    Disgusting that people would downvote this! If we allow this to become normal, we'll regret it.
    - blotter_paper 8y ago
      This mantra can be used to attack anybody for any reason, as long as you call them "evil." It's a road you can go down, but I wouldn't.
- ada1981 8y ago
  I don’t know. I sometimes manufacture physical products. I could state publically that I won’t. I could also not buy products made in China personally. In general we ought to try to change things we don’t like. I can’t imagine the people of China like this system do they?
  - Leary 8y ago
    You can ask Chinese people whether they think the system is good and whether they want you to boycott China.
    - godelski 8y ago
      I'd be interested in this, but every Chinese person that I've spoken to (they haven't been back to China in awhile), seems to think it is either just like the American credit system or that the government already knows everything about them and that there's security through obscurity. Is this common? Not considering politics for a second, I just couldn't imagine the impact of an Equifax like event with that amount of information.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    They do, actually! Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-people-china-think-about-social-credit-monitoring/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-p... Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government. Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin. It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.
    - TimTheTinker 8y ago
      > It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them. Also see Hitler's popular approval ratings [0] (Godwin's law notwithstanding). In August 1934, roughly 90% of German voters were in favor of the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor into a single Leader-Chancellor in the person of Adolf Hitler. Note that number should be taken with a big grain of salt, since there was tremendous social and political pressure to vote that way -- and a threat of repercussions for voting "no". [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0819.html#article https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...
- wpdev_63 8y ago
  The US is competing with China not just economically but socially as well. If China succeeds in creating a more 'productive' and 'complacent' population with its policies, expect the US government to do the same. Remember the US still has the largest surveillance apparatus in the world. All they would need to do to implement a social credit system is to flip a couple of switches.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    Those "switches" don't even need to be flipped by the US Government writ large. Boardroom meetings by "private" companies deciding to integrate ever more of the commercial surveillance infrastructure will suffice.
    - wpdev_63 8y ago
      Are you talking about the B.E.N.S.[0] program? Then yes, companies can currently target individuals very easily/illegally using the fusion centers. It's widely known that american companies have this capability but don't really know the details... [0]:https://www.bens.org/ https://www.bens.org/
      - mindslight 8y ago
        No, I wasn't talking about anything specific. Just the general setup of having a large part of US surveillance performed by commercial entities, combined with the ability of public companies administering critical services to refuse doing business with arbitrary individuals. For example: see the "unbanked". Rather than fixing the banking system so that basic transactions do not rely on credit, it's easier to create a whole class of people that the industry tells to get lost.
        wpdev_63 8y ago
        I guess people can be blacklisted. Google, Microsoft, and a bunch of others have blacklists from which they harass people and the banks I guess can refuse to process individual's transactions in their version of an orwellian wet dream but they threaten the company's integrity when they do that many times over. "O there just been a mistake at the bank" goes to "they are racially profiling me" very quickly. These very same programs target political activists. Also it doesn't help that there are decentralized alternative popping up everywhere. If monero(crypto coin) ever became mainstream, the world would be a very different place.
- justaguyhere 8y ago
  In what way would you boycott China? This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China. Maybe people can stop traveling to China, but that wouldn't make a difference big enough for the Chinese ruling class to care. But why restrict this question to China (though this particular article is about China)? Why not Saudi Arabia, for example? as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours Because, if this works, other governments will follow, in no time and likely with Chinese government help. They will "learn" from Chinese government's "experience". Even if you didn't care about the plight of Chinese people, you'd surely care about your own countrymen's freedom? Tech surveillance is more dangerous than anything, because it is easier and cheaper to implement and it can scale, compared to any other system.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    > This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China. That is most definitely not the case, almost all of our groceries and soft goods (that supermarkets sell) come from domestic or nearby foreign sources. Perhaps you meant hypermarkets or discount department stores like Walmart?
- merpnderp 8y ago
  That's exactly the same argument people made about apartheid South Africa. And yet nearly everyone would say sanctions and boycotts were appropriate and effective. China has millions of minorities in detention centers with some highly questionable things happening to those people. If you believe in justice and human rights, it is everyone's business what happens there.
- CodingSucks 8y ago
  We've finally found the one problem HackerNews willingly admits it can't innovate around: boycotting China.
pxue 8y ago
i don't think you understand the premises of how one ends up on the bad list. "owing" money means you borrow from secondary lender, using it to buy risky assets. you essentially played with fire and got burned. lots of cases like this where these "businessmen" loses money and then declared bankruptcy, refusing to pay anyone back. sounds a lot like wallstreet doesn't it? are you okay with what they did? this is government way saying enough is enough.
- ada1981 8y ago
  I don’t understand how someone ends up on the list. But I’m fairly certain I understand it more than you do. You can be put on the list for all sorts of things... “examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.”
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Being a problem for local party officials too. Pretty hard to campaign against corruption if you are barred from travel and other systems.
  - powerapple 8y ago
    no, not really.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    You may be certain that you understand the list (this one http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/shixin/ http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/shixin/), but you are mistaken. You probably read an article about the "social credit system" that got the details wrong. Getting put on the list is a punishment that can be ordered by a court for various infractions, but not buying video games, because (unlike the other three) it is merely frowned upon, but not illegal. Discouraging video games was part of one companies' private implementation of a "social credit system". The list is another "social credit system". Various local governments within China are also running their own pilots. Those systems are not connected yet. It is expected that eventually the Chinese government will decide on one implementation by selecting parts of the pilot projects, but it isn't clear which parts. Until that happens, buying too many video games isn't going to ban you from taking high-speed rail.
throwaway28031 8y ago
I don't understand the fear of the social credit system. It doesn't seem too different from the American credit scoring system. They are both systems designed by the elites to shape the behavior of commoners. Why do I have to regularly use a credit card to prove that I am credit worthy, so that I can get a bank loan to buy a house?
- gbear605 8y ago
  Because the bank wants assurance that you’re not going to go bankrupt or just not pay it back, and reliably paying off your credit card is a proxy for that. Whereas you taking a high speed train is not a risk, so blocking that is just punishment.
  - powerapple 8y ago
    These people do not want to repay their debts, mostly. And they have money, properties they don't declare. It is a solution to solve problems in China, not problems in US.
- kaiju0 8y ago
  I think the fear come from how hard it would be to dig out of the hole. People make mistakes. Under the American system the mistakes expire after time. I have not heard of the expiration of offences in this system. This social credit system is new an may evolve with time.
- veryworried 8y ago
  Sorry, but you are not entitled to a house or any loans. This is not "elites shaping the behavior of commoners", this is just common sense. Loaning money to people is an investment and giving money to people who have no history of even paying off a simple credit card bill doesn't make sense. It's like being 20 years old and creating a new startup then wondering why investors don't want to give you any money so you can hire out staff and build a product. It's not inherently impossible to get a loan with no credit history, just really difficult to do without something else to inspire confidence. And frankly, considering how easy it is for any Joe to build a decent credit history from just using credit cards I'd say most lenders are actually doing consumers a favor by lending them such vast amounts of money on such a basic premise. I know if it were my money I'd be way more conservative.
sneak 8y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/why-china-has-detained-as-many-as-1-million-muslims-quicktake https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/why-china... If you are looking for inhumane behaviors upon which to base a boycott of China, there are several better choices.

This system seems inhumane. I’ll consider supporting a boycott of China if it would help.

In what way would you boycott China? Refuse to buy or use products made there? How likely do you think this could scale to an impact that would meaningfully impact China's trade? And as horrible as I think the social credit system is, there's an interesting question, as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)?

mamon 8y ago
>> what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)? "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- thanksDr 8y ago
  Disgusting that people would downvote this! If we allow this to become normal, we'll regret it.
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    This mantra can be used to attack anybody for any reason, as long as you call them "evil." It's a road you can go down, but I wouldn't.
ada1981 8y ago
I don’t know. I sometimes manufacture physical products. I could state publically that I won’t. I could also not buy products made in China personally. In general we ought to try to change things we don’t like. I can’t imagine the people of China like this system do they?
- Leary 8y ago
  You can ask Chinese people whether they think the system is good and whether they want you to boycott China.
  - godelski 8y ago
    I'd be interested in this, but every Chinese person that I've spoken to (they haven't been back to China in awhile), seems to think it is either just like the American credit system or that the government already knows everything about them and that there's security through obscurity. Is this common? Not considering politics for a second, I just couldn't imagine the impact of an Equifax like event with that amount of information.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  They do, actually! Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-people-china-think-about-social-credit-monitoring/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-p... Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government. Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin. It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    > It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them. Also see Hitler's popular approval ratings [0] (Godwin's law notwithstanding). In August 1934, roughly 90% of German voters were in favor of the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor into a single Leader-Chancellor in the person of Adolf Hitler. Note that number should be taken with a big grain of salt, since there was tremendous social and political pressure to vote that way -- and a threat of repercussions for voting "no". [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0819.html#article https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...
wpdev_63 8y ago
The US is competing with China not just economically but socially as well. If China succeeds in creating a more 'productive' and 'complacent' population with its policies, expect the US government to do the same. Remember the US still has the largest surveillance apparatus in the world. All they would need to do to implement a social credit system is to flip a couple of switches.
- mindslight 8y ago
  Those "switches" don't even need to be flipped by the US Government writ large. Boardroom meetings by "private" companies deciding to integrate ever more of the commercial surveillance infrastructure will suffice.
  - wpdev_63 8y ago
    Are you talking about the B.E.N.S.[0] program? Then yes, companies can currently target individuals very easily/illegally using the fusion centers. It's widely known that american companies have this capability but don't really know the details... [0]:https://www.bens.org/ https://www.bens.org/
    - mindslight 8y ago
      No, I wasn't talking about anything specific. Just the general setup of having a large part of US surveillance performed by commercial entities, combined with the ability of public companies administering critical services to refuse doing business with arbitrary individuals. For example: see the "unbanked". Rather than fixing the banking system so that basic transactions do not rely on credit, it's easier to create a whole class of people that the industry tells to get lost.
      - wpdev_63 8y ago
        I guess people can be blacklisted. Google, Microsoft, and a bunch of others have blacklists from which they harass people and the banks I guess can refuse to process individual's transactions in their version of an orwellian wet dream but they threaten the company's integrity when they do that many times over. "O there just been a mistake at the bank" goes to "they are racially profiling me" very quickly. These very same programs target political activists. Also it doesn't help that there are decentralized alternative popping up everywhere. If monero(crypto coin) ever became mainstream, the world would be a very different place.
justaguyhere 8y ago
In what way would you boycott China? This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China. Maybe people can stop traveling to China, but that wouldn't make a difference big enough for the Chinese ruling class to care. But why restrict this question to China (though this particular article is about China)? Why not Saudi Arabia, for example? as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours Because, if this works, other governments will follow, in no time and likely with Chinese government help. They will "learn" from Chinese government's "experience". Even if you didn't care about the plight of Chinese people, you'd surely care about your own countrymen's freedom? Tech surveillance is more dangerous than anything, because it is easier and cheaper to implement and it can scale, compared to any other system.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  > This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China. That is most definitely not the case, almost all of our groceries and soft goods (that supermarkets sell) come from domestic or nearby foreign sources. Perhaps you meant hypermarkets or discount department stores like Walmart?
merpnderp 8y ago
That's exactly the same argument people made about apartheid South Africa. And yet nearly everyone would say sanctions and boycotts were appropriate and effective. China has millions of minorities in detention centers with some highly questionable things happening to those people. If you believe in justice and human rights, it is everyone's business what happens there.
CodingSucks 8y ago
We've finally found the one problem HackerNews willingly admits it can't innovate around: boycotting China.

pxue 8y ago

i don't think you understand the premises of how one ends up on the bad list. "owing" money means you borrow from secondary lender, using it to buy risky assets. you essentially played with fire and got burned. lots of cases like this where these "businessmen" loses money and then declared bankruptcy, refusing to pay anyone back. sounds a lot like wallstreet doesn't it? are you okay with what they did? this is government way saying enough is enough.

ada1981 8y ago
I don’t understand how someone ends up on the list. But I’m fairly certain I understand it more than you do. You can be put on the list for all sorts of things... “examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.”
- jandrese 8y ago
  Being a problem for local party officials too. Pretty hard to campaign against corruption if you are barred from travel and other systems.
- powerapple 8y ago
  no, not really.
- yorwba 8y ago
  You may be certain that you understand the list (this one http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/shixin/ http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/shixin/), but you are mistaken. You probably read an article about the "social credit system" that got the details wrong. Getting put on the list is a punishment that can be ordered by a court for various infractions, but not buying video games, because (unlike the other three) it is merely frowned upon, but not illegal. Discouraging video games was part of one companies' private implementation of a "social credit system". The list is another "social credit system". Various local governments within China are also running their own pilots. Those systems are not connected yet. It is expected that eventually the Chinese government will decide on one implementation by selecting parts of the pilot projects, but it isn't clear which parts. Until that happens, buying too many video games isn't going to ban you from taking high-speed rail.

throwaway28031 8y ago

I don't understand the fear of the social credit system. It doesn't seem too different from the American credit scoring system. They are both systems designed by the elites to shape the behavior of commoners. Why do I have to regularly use a credit card to prove that I am credit worthy, so that I can get a bank loan to buy a house?

gbear605 8y ago
Because the bank wants assurance that you’re not going to go bankrupt or just not pay it back, and reliably paying off your credit card is a proxy for that. Whereas you taking a high speed train is not a risk, so blocking that is just punishment.
- powerapple 8y ago
  These people do not want to repay their debts, mostly. And they have money, properties they don't declare. It is a solution to solve problems in China, not problems in US.
kaiju0 8y ago
I think the fear come from how hard it would be to dig out of the hole. People make mistakes. Under the American system the mistakes expire after time. I have not heard of the expiration of offences in this system. This social credit system is new an may evolve with time.
veryworried 8y ago
Sorry, but you are not entitled to a house or any loans. This is not "elites shaping the behavior of commoners", this is just common sense. Loaning money to people is an investment and giving money to people who have no history of even paying off a simple credit card bill doesn't make sense. It's like being 20 years old and creating a new startup then wondering why investors don't want to give you any money so you can hire out staff and build a product. It's not inherently impossible to get a loan with no credit history, just really difficult to do without something else to inspire confidence. And frankly, considering how easy it is for any Joe to build a decent credit history from just using credit cards I'd say most lenders are actually doing consumers a favor by lending them such vast amounts of money on such a basic premise. I know if it were my money I'd be way more conservative.

sneak 8y ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/why-china-has-detained-as-many-as-1-million-muslims-quicktake https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/why-china... If you are looking for inhumane behaviors upon which to base a boycott of China, there are several better choices.