10 ms·

A cogent argument could.be made that transunion, Equifax, and other big private credit clearinghouses act as direct agents of an unspoken american "social credi

A cogent argument could.be made that transunion, Equifax, and other big private credit clearinghouses act as direct agents of an unspoken american "social credit" system in which the credit score denies housing and employment to those who refuse to or cannot conform to a largely invisible tome of rules. These agents are then unpoliced as they serve capitalisms direct need for an underclass. Full disclosure: I am a communist, and recognize most Marxist state social credit systems tend to have the same effect. Transparency in the plenary party sessions seems to do little to reform this cudgel but the parallels in capitalisms version are neat to me.

quantified 4y ago
I would argue it's not completely unspoken. But it's not spoken loudly enough. Pass it on.
xxpor 4y ago
I see where you're coming from, but on the other hand, the biggest rules are well known and quite simple: If you take a loan and pay it back on time, you'll have high credit. If you fail to meet your obligations, you won't. The existence of an underclass which is constantly on the edge of not being able to pay their bills is true though.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I agree with you on the current state, but I think parent may be concerned about future state where unelected, private entity determines your societal worth based on yet unknown rules; or known, but less bound by 'loan paid off' type of information. Right now, it appears to be mostly limited to various financial events, but current state is not guaranteed not to change in the future.
  - jolux 4y ago
    > future state GP's comment was written in present tense.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  Those are not the only rules though... you can have low credit for not taking out enough loans and not having debt. You get dinged for opening and closing credit card accounts too quickly, even if you've never missed a payment. Your score goes down if you simply inquire about loans a bit too often... All of these are "rules" made up unilaterally by the credit bureaus.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    I have a few credit cards that I no longer use. If I cancel them my score would go down because the average age/length credit history would go down. Not by that much, but it is surprising that leaving these cards open is incentivized whereas the more secure and less risky thing to do would be to close those accounts.
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      It make a a bit more sense when you think about it - Risk isn’t really the main thing incentivized here, making interest payments is haha. Risky lenders don’t make payments, but neither do people who never take on debt
      - medvezhenok 4y ago
        Credit scores actually are designed to measure risk, not interest payments. Otherwise high credit utilization would be a positive:) There are certainly edge cases where the score has low predictive value, but overall the correlation between credit score and risk is quite large.
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      The closed card drops off your account history after ~10 years, so your score shouldn't immediately go down. Technically, I'm not sure that the credit scores can differentiate between you closing a card and the bank closing your card (the latter might be some sort of signal of potential change in creditworthiness) In general, credit scores are optimized for the average consumer - and so behaviors around the edges don't always make sense in terms of your score going up or down. If you think about the system that was replaced by credit cards (i.e. keeping a tab open with many different stores), you'd be hard pressed to say that the amount of credit extended is lower now (overall), than under the old system. Whether that's a good thing or not is a different question.
- epgui 4y ago
  On the contrary, the actual rules and methodologies for credit score calculations are not documented anywhere public. Saying essentially "just don't do bad things to your reputation" is at most a very hand wavy "rule of thumb", but it's not a codified "rule" of the sort we should expect to see of such a consequential system.
  - gruez 4y ago
    > On the contrary, the actual rules and methodologies for credit score calculations are not documented anywhere public. The exact formulas might not be, but the general factors aren't exactly a secret. Hell, the "free credit score" service my bank offers even provides a simulator tool to estimate what would happen to my credit score if I did certain things (eg. get a car loan, or pay off an existing loan).
- bix6 4y ago
  Many people I’ve talked to have very little idea what the factors affecting their credit scores are. Many are unaware or uninterested. I have helped many people improve their credit scores because I have spent hours learning how to game this system. Much of this information is not taught to people until they need credit at which point it’s too late to start establishing a history and your best bet is some bs predatory card that locks up more money than you can afford.
  - vuln 4y ago
    Have you thought about publishing your tactics in gaming the credit system?
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      There are already tons of articles and videos that have already been published on this. And now Experian / other bureaus offer score breakdowns along with calculators where you can explore how hypothetical actions would affect your score. I think the space is pretty well covered:) (For an example, Google for AskSebby - How to Increase Your Credit Score)
      - vuln 4y ago
        Just tried it and received a 404 Google Search: AskSebby - How to Increase Your Credit Score First AskSebby result. https://www.asksebby.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-credit-score-long-term-as-a-millennial https://www.asksebby.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-credit-sco... I'll keep digging.
    - bix6 4y ago
      As someone else mentioned there is a ton of existing content. The problem is people don’t look until it’s too late because nobody cares about this stuff until it causes issues. Unless schools start teaching real life financial basics the problems will continue. Credit Karma has been one of my most useful resource for improvements because they break down the factors very well. Many banks have stepped up their game but some don’t give you as much detail.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  No, that isn't even remotely how it works. My credit score has gone down consistently after getting rid of all my debt.
  - gruez 4y ago
    If you understand how credit scores work, you'd realize that what you've experienced doesn't contradict the parent's claim. Specifically, having low credit utilization (ie. low credit used compared to available credit) and high diversity of accounts is beneficial for your credit score. Closing accounts is bad for both of these, hence why your credit score dropped. It doesn't invalidate the parent's claim that you can have good credit by just using credit and paying it back on time. FWIW I have a few credit cards that I pay on time every month, and my credit score is pretty good.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  My credit is tanked from an ex opening up accounts in my name and running up the tab while I was being treated for leukaemia and Crohns. Six years later and I’m still fixing the damage.
  - sixstringtheory 4y ago
    Fucking hell, why are people such monsters? That’s terrible to hear, hope you’re doing alright.
    - gruez 4y ago
      [deleted]
      - tspike 4y ago
        I think it’s fairly clear the monster here is the ex that took advantage of a vulnerable person.
  - consp 4y ago
    Question from someone not in the us: can you legally open a creditcard in someone else's name or does it have to involve some form of fraud? I'm pretty sure my application was only valid when signed by the requester by that was in Europe and rules may differ. I do know you can open them for shared accounts, but that is not what I am talking about.
    - atdrummond 4y ago
      It was/is fraud, yes. Typically the way you open a card in someone else’s name on your account is by adding them as an authorized user.
- lmm 4y ago
  > If you take a loan and pay it back on time, you'll have high credit. Unless you're on the Equifax blacklist. Journalists who wrote anti-equifax articles tend to find their way there, as do ex-girlfriends of upper management. And conversely women who do NSA hookups with a VP or above tend to find their way onto a whitelist that boosts your credit score by 150 or so - it's considered an unwritten perk of the job. (The above is purely speculation, I have no idea whether any of it is actually true, but honestly, why wouldn't it be?)
  - xxpor 4y ago
    This is a good reason for most finance companies to take the middle of the 3 scores.
    - lmm 4y ago
      That helps some, but realistically it's a small industry and there are lots of channels (formal and otherwise) linking the competitors. A lot of people working at one previously worked at another.
- TheDong 4y ago
  My parents taught me that debt was bad. They told me that credit cards were traps to get you into debt, that preyed on poor impulse control, and that it was better not to have one. If you can't tell, my parents grew up in a time when the credit score system didn't really matter, and didn't understand it. I did not get a credit card. I did not have any loans, for school or anything else. My credit score wasn't even a number, it just didn't exist. Even the bank I banked with, which could see that I had more than $8k USD deposited monthly, that could see I had $30k in an account with them, would not give me a loan to buy a car. Even if I were to get a credit card and pay it back on time, my credit score would be quite low due to having no history, and I still could not get a loan. I'm fortunate that the apartments I have rented so far have not done credit checks, only background checks and looked at salaries / offer letters, but there are many apartments I simply could not rent since I would obviously fail their credit check, despite never having had any debt.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >My credit score wasn't even a number, it just didn't exist. Even the bank I banked with, which could see that I had more than $8k USD deposited monthly, that could see I had $30k in an account with them, would not give me a loan to buy a car. Right, because it's a credit score, not a finance score. I'm not sure what you want here. Do you want credit bureaus to collect even more information about your financial life so they can have a more accurate picture?
    - wmf 4y ago
      I see this as an education problem. People need to be taught the specific rules of credit scores in addition to general personal finance.
      - TheDong 4y ago
        I feel like my parent's point about credit cards and college loans being bad were correct though. Like, I believe they're right that going to college on a full-ride scholarship was better than going to a more expensive one on a loan. I also believe they're right that credit cards are bad. Like, banks make money on credit cards by: 1. hoping you miss a payment, and collecting interest, and 2. charging merchants, thus raising the price of goods for everyone (typically) I guess you're saying that we should teach people "Yes, use credit cards, these tools designed to put you in debt, but be careful. Why use something designed to put you in debt? Because there's another private company that will punish you by not letting you rent certain apartments if you don't use a credit card"
mbg721 4y ago
It seems weird not to name Experian. Aren't there only three?
- xeromal 4y ago
  There's actually 4. Innovis
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  There are a bunch of other types of reporting agencies too, not just for credit: https://www.consumerlawfirm.com/credit-reporting-agencies.htm https://www.consumerlawfirm.com/credit-reporting-agencies.ht... https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-reports-and-scores/consumer-reporting-companies/companies-list/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-report...
  - runnerup 4y ago
    Yeah I've had difficulty renting apartments for 8 years because "LeasingDesk" falsely reported that I owed a past landlord $36,000. No one ever told me this is why my applications always faced long delays, additional scrutiny, increasingly insane documentation requirements, and huge security deposits. Finally I asked my most recent apartment complex "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" and they were like "uhh this report..." and I spent 3 months getting LeasingDesk to deny, deny, and finally admit/accept my claim that they had bad data. It was a nightmare to get it fixed. They just said "No, the data is correct because we called your old apartment complex and they said it was correct." Because LeasingDesk was acting in good faith I could only sue my old apartment complex for misreporting it, I couldn't use CFPB to force LeasingDesk to fix it. So yeah, its not just Experian/TransUnion/Equifax....there are dozens and dozens and dozens of data brokers acting as credit bureaus. Right now the only protections consumers have from them come from the CFPB but if that's ever abolished we'll only have lawyers and torts.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    And before that large companies would keep their own records. My dad needed to put down a 3-figure deposit for his first phone line in the 70s because someone with the same first name and last name who lived in the same town as he went to college regularly racked up over $100 per month in long-distance bills.
refurb 4y ago
If “paying you debts” is an “invisible tome of rules” then I’m all for it. Let’s be honest, credit score pretty accurately reflect what they are supposed to measure - credit worthiness.
- corytheboyd 4y ago
  I would not loan someone thousands of dollars on a "trust me bro", so I wouldn't expect banks to either. Corruption of the authority judging trustworthiness is bad, but there just needs to be an authority doing this. The real problem is more likely that wages and living expenses are not in sync, which just fucks over the poor people. Using credit to avoid literally dying on the street is more a symptom of wages making no sense. It's sad. I don't like it either. I don't trust these people either. Equifax fucked me and millions of others, and I got a check for $5.21. There is no justice and there never will be.
  - epgui 4y ago
    > there just needs to be an authority doing this People will tolerate even the harshest laws if they feel like they are applied fairly. But in this case there is no published rule book, and no published methodology for calculating credit scores. There is not even the most basic transparency.
    - corytheboyd 4y ago
      Don't get me wrong I'd love to see the rule book too. Would you trust the rules though? There will always be the mysterious few with the power. I wish we could just have nice things without corruption :/
      - epgui 4y ago
        > Would you trust the rules though? Rules don't need to be trusted, they need to be written down and available for reading.
- 33955985 4y ago
jessaustin 4y ago
Even in our most dystopian RAND-suggested bedtime story vision of a "communist hellhole", those proles who happened to possess a ruble when they got to the front of the breadline could buy a loaf. In the supercapitalist future, all transactions will require the approval of more than the two involved parties. Good luck buying anything if you ever express skepticism toward the great and powerful credit bureaus.
- nwiswell 4y ago
  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something about the point you're making, but in 2023 the third party creditor already must approve any transactions where credit is extended (e.g. credit card) Credit bureaus remain uninvolved with cash transactions since, er, well, there's no creditor to be concerned about creditworthiness? I don't see how "supercapitalism" changes that
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    You haven't seen any of the anti-cash propaganda, some of it here on HN? The interests behind that are also behind several other disturbing changes.
    - nwiswell 4y ago
      Square peg, round hole. Has nothing to do with credit bureaus.
  - czbond 4y ago
    If you replace "Credit Bureau" with CBDC (Central Bank Digital Coin) it would ring very true or the probable future.
    - nwiswell 4y ago
      Alright, that's a little bit different, but doesn't that just imply that Bitcoin or Monero become "cash" in case you need to Do Some Crimes?
- 4y ago
kube-system 4y ago
The difference in the US financial system of credit and a "social credit" system is that these systems measure only attributes about financial credit, and in fact, the US has laws that specifically forbid many social factors from being used.
Tangurena2 4y ago
Additionally, many executives are virulently opposed to people working multiple jobs and are using things like The Work Number to identify and fire remote workers who have more than one job.

quantified 4y ago

I would argue it's not completely unspoken. But it's not spoken loudly enough. Pass it on.

xxpor 4y ago

I see where you're coming from, but on the other hand, the biggest rules are well known and quite simple: If you take a loan and pay it back on time, you'll have high credit. If you fail to meet your obligations, you won't. The existence of an underclass which is constantly on the edge of not being able to pay their bills is true though.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I agree with you on the current state, but I think parent may be concerned about future state where unelected, private entity determines your societal worth based on yet unknown rules; or known, but less bound by 'loan paid off' type of information. Right now, it appears to be mostly limited to various financial events, but current state is not guaranteed not to change in the future.
- jolux 4y ago
  > future state GP's comment was written in present tense.
radicaldreamer 4y ago
Those are not the only rules though... you can have low credit for not taking out enough loans and not having debt. You get dinged for opening and closing credit card accounts too quickly, even if you've never missed a payment. Your score goes down if you simply inquire about loans a bit too often... All of these are "rules" made up unilaterally by the credit bureaus.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  I have a few credit cards that I no longer use. If I cancel them my score would go down because the average age/length credit history would go down. Not by that much, but it is surprising that leaving these cards open is incentivized whereas the more secure and less risky thing to do would be to close those accounts.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    It make a a bit more sense when you think about it - Risk isn’t really the main thing incentivized here, making interest payments is haha. Risky lenders don’t make payments, but neither do people who never take on debt
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      Credit scores actually are designed to measure risk, not interest payments. Otherwise high credit utilization would be a positive:) There are certainly edge cases where the score has low predictive value, but overall the correlation between credit score and risk is quite large.
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    The closed card drops off your account history after ~10 years, so your score shouldn't immediately go down. Technically, I'm not sure that the credit scores can differentiate between you closing a card and the bank closing your card (the latter might be some sort of signal of potential change in creditworthiness) In general, credit scores are optimized for the average consumer - and so behaviors around the edges don't always make sense in terms of your score going up or down. If you think about the system that was replaced by credit cards (i.e. keeping a tab open with many different stores), you'd be hard pressed to say that the amount of credit extended is lower now (overall), than under the old system. Whether that's a good thing or not is a different question.
epgui 4y ago
On the contrary, the actual rules and methodologies for credit score calculations are not documented anywhere public. Saying essentially "just don't do bad things to your reputation" is at most a very hand wavy "rule of thumb", but it's not a codified "rule" of the sort we should expect to see of such a consequential system.
- gruez 4y ago
  > On the contrary, the actual rules and methodologies for credit score calculations are not documented anywhere public. The exact formulas might not be, but the general factors aren't exactly a secret. Hell, the "free credit score" service my bank offers even provides a simulator tool to estimate what would happen to my credit score if I did certain things (eg. get a car loan, or pay off an existing loan).
bix6 4y ago
Many people I’ve talked to have very little idea what the factors affecting their credit scores are. Many are unaware or uninterested. I have helped many people improve their credit scores because I have spent hours learning how to game this system. Much of this information is not taught to people until they need credit at which point it’s too late to start establishing a history and your best bet is some bs predatory card that locks up more money than you can afford.
- vuln 4y ago
  Have you thought about publishing your tactics in gaming the credit system?
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    There are already tons of articles and videos that have already been published on this. And now Experian / other bureaus offer score breakdowns along with calculators where you can explore how hypothetical actions would affect your score. I think the space is pretty well covered:) (For an example, Google for AskSebby - How to Increase Your Credit Score)
    - vuln 4y ago
      Just tried it and received a 404 Google Search: AskSebby - How to Increase Your Credit Score First AskSebby result. https://www.asksebby.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-credit-score-long-term-as-a-millennial https://www.asksebby.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-credit-sco... I'll keep digging.
  - bix6 4y ago
    As someone else mentioned there is a ton of existing content. The problem is people don’t look until it’s too late because nobody cares about this stuff until it causes issues. Unless schools start teaching real life financial basics the problems will continue. Credit Karma has been one of my most useful resource for improvements because they break down the factors very well. Many banks have stepped up their game but some don’t give you as much detail.
sidewndr46 4y ago
No, that isn't even remotely how it works. My credit score has gone down consistently after getting rid of all my debt.
- gruez 4y ago
  If you understand how credit scores work, you'd realize that what you've experienced doesn't contradict the parent's claim. Specifically, having low credit utilization (ie. low credit used compared to available credit) and high diversity of accounts is beneficial for your credit score. Closing accounts is bad for both of these, hence why your credit score dropped. It doesn't invalidate the parent's claim that you can have good credit by just using credit and paying it back on time. FWIW I have a few credit cards that I pay on time every month, and my credit score is pretty good.
atdrummond 4y ago
My credit is tanked from an ex opening up accounts in my name and running up the tab while I was being treated for leukaemia and Crohns. Six years later and I’m still fixing the damage.
- sixstringtheory 4y ago
  Fucking hell, why are people such monsters? That’s terrible to hear, hope you’re doing alright.
  - gruez 4y ago
    [deleted]
    - tspike 4y ago
      I think it’s fairly clear the monster here is the ex that took advantage of a vulnerable person.
- consp 4y ago
  Question from someone not in the us: can you legally open a creditcard in someone else's name or does it have to involve some form of fraud? I'm pretty sure my application was only valid when signed by the requester by that was in Europe and rules may differ. I do know you can open them for shared accounts, but that is not what I am talking about.
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    It was/is fraud, yes. Typically the way you open a card in someone else’s name on your account is by adding them as an authorized user.
lmm 4y ago
> If you take a loan and pay it back on time, you'll have high credit. Unless you're on the Equifax blacklist. Journalists who wrote anti-equifax articles tend to find their way there, as do ex-girlfriends of upper management. And conversely women who do NSA hookups with a VP or above tend to find their way onto a whitelist that boosts your credit score by 150 or so - it's considered an unwritten perk of the job. (The above is purely speculation, I have no idea whether any of it is actually true, but honestly, why wouldn't it be?)
- xxpor 4y ago
  This is a good reason for most finance companies to take the middle of the 3 scores.
  - lmm 4y ago
    That helps some, but realistically it's a small industry and there are lots of channels (formal and otherwise) linking the competitors. A lot of people working at one previously worked at another.
TheDong 4y ago
My parents taught me that debt was bad. They told me that credit cards were traps to get you into debt, that preyed on poor impulse control, and that it was better not to have one. If you can't tell, my parents grew up in a time when the credit score system didn't really matter, and didn't understand it. I did not get a credit card. I did not have any loans, for school or anything else. My credit score wasn't even a number, it just didn't exist. Even the bank I banked with, which could see that I had more than $8k USD deposited monthly, that could see I had $30k in an account with them, would not give me a loan to buy a car. Even if I were to get a credit card and pay it back on time, my credit score would be quite low due to having no history, and I still could not get a loan. I'm fortunate that the apartments I have rented so far have not done credit checks, only background checks and looked at salaries / offer letters, but there are many apartments I simply could not rent since I would obviously fail their credit check, despite never having had any debt.
- gruez 4y ago
  >My credit score wasn't even a number, it just didn't exist. Even the bank I banked with, which could see that I had more than $8k USD deposited monthly, that could see I had $30k in an account with them, would not give me a loan to buy a car. Right, because it's a credit score, not a finance score. I'm not sure what you want here. Do you want credit bureaus to collect even more information about your financial life so they can have a more accurate picture?
  - wmf 4y ago
    I see this as an education problem. People need to be taught the specific rules of credit scores in addition to general personal finance.
    - TheDong 4y ago
      I feel like my parent's point about credit cards and college loans being bad were correct though. Like, I believe they're right that going to college on a full-ride scholarship was better than going to a more expensive one on a loan. I also believe they're right that credit cards are bad. Like, banks make money on credit cards by: 1. hoping you miss a payment, and collecting interest, and 2. charging merchants, thus raising the price of goods for everyone (typically) I guess you're saying that we should teach people "Yes, use credit cards, these tools designed to put you in debt, but be careful. Why use something designed to put you in debt? Because there's another private company that will punish you by not letting you rent certain apartments if you don't use a credit card"

mbg721 4y ago

It seems weird not to name Experian. Aren't there only three?

xeromal 4y ago
There's actually 4. Innovis
MerelyMortal 4y ago
There are a bunch of other types of reporting agencies too, not just for credit: https://www.consumerlawfirm.com/credit-reporting-agencies.htm https://www.consumerlawfirm.com/credit-reporting-agencies.ht... https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-reports-and-scores/consumer-reporting-companies/companies-list/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-report...
- runnerup 4y ago
  Yeah I've had difficulty renting apartments for 8 years because "LeasingDesk" falsely reported that I owed a past landlord $36,000. No one ever told me this is why my applications always faced long delays, additional scrutiny, increasingly insane documentation requirements, and huge security deposits. Finally I asked my most recent apartment complex "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" and they were like "uhh this report..." and I spent 3 months getting LeasingDesk to deny, deny, and finally admit/accept my claim that they had bad data. It was a nightmare to get it fixed. They just said "No, the data is correct because we called your old apartment complex and they said it was correct." Because LeasingDesk was acting in good faith I could only sue my old apartment complex for misreporting it, I couldn't use CFPB to force LeasingDesk to fix it. So yeah, its not just Experian/TransUnion/Equifax....there are dozens and dozens and dozens of data brokers acting as credit bureaus. Right now the only protections consumers have from them come from the CFPB but if that's ever abolished we'll only have lawyers and torts.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  And before that large companies would keep their own records. My dad needed to put down a 3-figure deposit for his first phone line in the 70s because someone with the same first name and last name who lived in the same town as he went to college regularly racked up over $100 per month in long-distance bills.

refurb 4y ago

If “paying you debts” is an “invisible tome of rules” then I’m all for it. Let’s be honest, credit score pretty accurately reflect what they are supposed to measure - credit worthiness.

corytheboyd 4y ago
I would not loan someone thousands of dollars on a "trust me bro", so I wouldn't expect banks to either. Corruption of the authority judging trustworthiness is bad, but there just needs to be an authority doing this. The real problem is more likely that wages and living expenses are not in sync, which just fucks over the poor people. Using credit to avoid literally dying on the street is more a symptom of wages making no sense. It's sad. I don't like it either. I don't trust these people either. Equifax fucked me and millions of others, and I got a check for $5.21. There is no justice and there never will be.
- epgui 4y ago
  > there just needs to be an authority doing this People will tolerate even the harshest laws if they feel like they are applied fairly. But in this case there is no published rule book, and no published methodology for calculating credit scores. There is not even the most basic transparency.
  - corytheboyd 4y ago
    Don't get me wrong I'd love to see the rule book too. Would you trust the rules though? There will always be the mysterious few with the power. I wish we could just have nice things without corruption :/
    - epgui 4y ago
      > Would you trust the rules though? Rules don't need to be trusted, they need to be written down and available for reading.
33955985 4y ago

jessaustin 4y ago

Even in our most dystopian RAND-suggested bedtime story vision of a "communist hellhole", those proles who happened to possess a ruble when they got to the front of the breadline could buy a loaf. In the supercapitalist future, all transactions will require the approval of more than the two involved parties. Good luck buying anything if you ever express skepticism toward the great and powerful credit bureaus.

nwiswell 4y ago
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something about the point you're making, but in 2023 the third party creditor already must approve any transactions where credit is extended (e.g. credit card) Credit bureaus remain uninvolved with cash transactions since, er, well, there's no creditor to be concerned about creditworthiness? I don't see how "supercapitalism" changes that
- jessaustin 4y ago
  You haven't seen any of the anti-cash propaganda, some of it here on HN? The interests behind that are also behind several other disturbing changes.
  - nwiswell 4y ago
    Square peg, round hole. Has nothing to do with credit bureaus.
- czbond 4y ago
  If you replace "Credit Bureau" with CBDC (Central Bank Digital Coin) it would ring very true or the probable future.
  - nwiswell 4y ago
    Alright, that's a little bit different, but doesn't that just imply that Bitcoin or Monero become "cash" in case you need to Do Some Crimes?
4y ago

kube-system 4y ago

The difference in the US financial system of credit and a "social credit" system is that these systems measure only attributes about financial credit, and in fact, the US has laws that specifically forbid many social factors from being used.

Tangurena2 4y ago

Additionally, many executives are virulently opposed to people working multiple jobs and are using things like The Work Number to identify and fire remote workers who have more than one job.