Perhaps that is a good thing. There is no argument more convincing than a demonstration. So I'd rather observe this scheme's first failure in China than elsewhere. The rest of the world can learn a lasting lesson in what not to do.
This is not an empirical issue. Without knowing any of the outcomes, we can already say that a government clocking your every move and giving you a rating based on how favorable the government finds your behavior, all without your consent, is an utterly obscene moral evil.
Maybe it is a question of needing to experience what happens though.
Most people are of the "wait and see" and "you gotta do what you gotta do to survive" mentality. So they "wait" and let events unfold, and survivors in those cascade of events are idealized as morally good.
This experiment has been tried before. The main difference being this Cultural Revolution will be digitized, and the informants will be databases, not your neighbors.
In his book "The Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958) he describes a dystopia where everything in a society is decided by using "merit" (intelligence + effort).
For all of those whom use "meritocracy" with a positive connotation, it should be a compulsory read. It's also short and very fun.
You’re putting up a straw man. I could write a dystopian book about any ideology. A good meritocracy would deal with these issues because a dystopian meritocracy would likely hamper innovation and the emergence of new standards and areas of merit.
Well, it's kinda fun that the very word of meritocracy was invented as a dystopian word, but now it got a positive connotation. That's not a straw man: it's a fun fact.
> Not kidding. Its this circular 'meritocracy' argument that makes for insular, inbred organizations with few creative ideas.
Just thinking out loud here but what's the alternative? Random allocation of goods/power or random promotion of individuals/companies based on nothing?
At least in a meritocracy advancement of an individual/organization is based on some performance measurement - we can of course argue about different performance measures and sets of tasks - but we have some means of guiding society in a normative way.
You could actually design your organization to find the best fit for each member of the team. Hire based on differing skills and approach, instead of dismissing them as "not a cultural fit".
When the 'norm' is defined as 'just like the rest of us' is when you get into trouble.
You would prefer college admissions be based on a blind lottery system? That seems like a great way to destroy an education system. Would degrees then be allocated randomly to people who may or may not have studied? Maybe you’re being sarcastic.
That's missing the point. Its the staff/teaching that has become insular. The students enter with lots of creativity and individual ideas. They get graded and norm'd to death, step into line or fail, and spit out.
So far historically (as long time back as we can see) - by FAR the most effective and fair method for defining those things has been the Free Market Economy. (With addition of a few regulations to prevent fraud and corruption.) It's not perfect. But what is?
But isn't free market's main goal basically the accumulation of wealth and the tokens of the economic system it's being applied to ? edit: disregard that, the aim of free market is to provide an environment where all players play with same rules Regardless of the actual products or services it delivers. Although I am a proponent of some aspects of the free market I don't agree the goals should emerge from it.
To me, this high level news and the political system in China is terrifying because of the implications that they limit freedom. However, I rarely great about civil unrest in China. Is that because it's hard to get independent journalists to go there? Or, is the economic boom the greater good to most Chinese? Or something else?
There are protests and issues bubbling up all the time - hundreds or thousands of actions in any given year. It’s a big country with a lot of issues, so that’s not unexpected.
But the one thing the CCP is undoubtably world class at is ensuring protests or issues don’t ever gather momentum and start spreading.
So, a lot of the police apparatus, media and online censorship is geared up to this end.
Potential instigators of unrest (lawyers, independent/foreign journalists, activists) are routinely harassed and locked up, or put under immense pressure.
TV and traditional media outlets are tightly controlled and will receive directives about what they can and can’t report on. They self-censor and will not promote news or issues that are outright critical of the government. Often negative news is shown, but it is massaged and spun to show the CCP proactively dealing with a problem, rather than causing a problem or being incompetent.
Burgeoning online trending topics are regularly blanket censored if they are critical of the government and gaining traction fast.
Also, remember that these things are bad, but daily life in China is still daily life. Most people will never really experience massive injustice or rights abuses, just as most Americans will not be shot in a school shooting. It doesn’t mean the injustices aren’t happening and/or bad.
And finally, yes. The last 30 years of economic prosperity mean that most people are pretty happy with their life in China, or at the very least they just want to focus on making money, getting rich, and avoiding problems.
> However, Susan Shirk, the head of the 21st Century China Centre at the University of California, San Diego, disputed the portrayal of Xi as an almighty Mao-like figure.
> “He’s ruling differently, for sure, and people are intimidated by him because of the anti-corruption campaign.” But Shirk said she was reserving judgment on whether Xi was attempting “a real dictatorial play” until the new line-up of China’s top ruling council, the politburo standing committee, was announced on Wednesday.
> If that committee included at least one of three possible successors – Hu Chunhua, Chen Min’er or Zhang Qingwei – that would signal Xi’s intention to step down in 2022, she said. If no clear successor emerged, however, it would fuel fears that Xi was “going for broke, all-out to be a dictator” and planned to remain in power indefinitely.
I looked and none of those individuals were appointed to the standing committee of the politburo. Two of them are on the regular politburo (Min’er and Chunhua), but Shirk referenced the standing committee specifically. So by her measure this is a dictatorial path.
Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring?
Brooker tackled this kind of thing in Black Mirror, and while his vision of it was pretty bleak, it actually seemed a lot more open to social mobility than our current system in which inequality is becoming more deeply entrenched.
Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund.
The Black Mirror version of this system would be deeply affected by attractiveness, for example, which would be one possible failing, but there's no indication that the Chinese version is as susceptible to that.
Social mobility at the cost of honest expression of personal beliefs, though. Essentially, lack of personal freedom through rigorous self-censorship.
In that episode, Nosedive, the higher up you got, the more "fake" it got. The lower you got, the more "real". Culminating with the archteypical "likeable truck lady".
Loss of freedom, no matter if through oppression or through more insiduous means like reverse psychology, is a very heavy price to pay.
The big issue is that our society faces massive challenges wrt. population growth, climate change, environmental stress, technical change and population crashes over the next two centuries. To make it through these it will need a lot of its members to do a lot of creating and experimenting. The complete loss of privacy will chill these efforts and prevent the rapid adaptions that I believe are necessary.
>Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring?
>[credit can be awarded for] doing exemplary business
Some examples of exemplary businessmen who are justly rewarded under our wonderful system are Mr Trump, Mr Zuckerburg, and the Kochs, who have been awarded outstanding sums of social credit from their efforts in reputable, important businesses.
>allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step
Horatio Alger has had trouble moving beyond his job at the local Zhongwen-Mart. He isn't able to attend university, or even take public transport to get there, if he were. Due to several traffic fines, a minor drug conviction, and a bad credit score, he has never escaped poverty.
Mr Trump has been the subject of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, and Mr Obama admitted to drug use--the same substance as Horatio Alger; but since neither convicted, their social credit remains extremely high.
And if it succeeds, then I'd be glad to be wrong.