[dlwdlw]

Here’s a story of why China is a rather paradoxical state. It’s not pure authoritarianism.

Many people who can’t return loans have their name and id number shown on large digital billboards. The goal is to shame them into returning money.

Sounds dystopian right?

BUT the reason this is done is because these people can squat in their houses (which may bot belong to them) and the police and law can’t do anything. The social backlash of kicking someone out of their sole living space would be huge.

Some lenders do things like send thugs to harrass them or get a court order to freeze their bank accounts.

Yet the “core” of the issues is that “the law is the law” is NOT followed. It has flexibility rooted in human understanding. Often lenders have to meet halfway per a judge’s order b/c otherwise the lendee wouldn’t be able to make a living.

[spenvo]

I'm sorry, but I don't buy the need to be sensitive toward optics of evicting defaulting homeowners when the government rounds up and exports populations en masse. See internment camps, dam clearing, etc.

Furthermore, you're completely sidestepping the most dystopian aspects of the social credit system, which takes peoples' personal views into account and is as much a vehicle for thought policing as anything else

[tdb7893]

Yeah, it's a good reminder that our views on all other countries (and also groups within our own countries) always lacks a lot of nuance.

[kodablah]

> The social backlash of kicking someone out of their sole living space would be huge.

Are there examples of how this kind of social backlash manifests? As an outsider, I have a hard time understanding or seeing it if/when it occurs.

[Mizza]

I've spent a little bit of time and there and found that this is extremely true, but also equally true of America as well.

For instance, although China is absolutely totalitarian when it comes to political freedom, freedom of speech, and even freedom of thought (in fact, far more authoritarian than neoliberals will ever admit), you do feel a lot more "free" at the _street level_. There are basically no traffic laws, you can drink and smoke wherever you want, you can set up a shop on the side of a sidewalk, you can make and sell bootlegs of anything you want - you can even piss and shit in the middle of the street without so much as a second thought about it (this is disgustingly common there.)

On the flip side, in America I can (ostensibly) say whatever you want politically, but I can't legally drink a beer on the sidewalk. I can't open a certain type of shop in a certain area. I can't sell products which use such-and-such technology. I can't even cross the street at certain times and places. Land of the free!

[erikpukinskis]

Interestingly you can set up a microcosm of (many of) the Chinese freedoms you describe in the U.S., but not vice versa.

I can buy some unincorporated land, build a street, and let people piss and shit and sell food and knockoff purses.

However I can’t buy land in China and set up an area with a free newspaper.

This is because the U.S. prohibitions you cite are de facto prohibitions while the Chinese ones are actually human rights not granted by the state.

It’s a somewhat academic distinction in terms of our day to day lives, but it’s meaningful when talking about what social movement tactics are available to us.

[i_am_nomad]

To quote Erlich Bachmann speaking to Jin Yang, “This is Palo Alto... we don’t have the freedoms you have in China.”

[gcb0]

that State "problem" seems to be solved when they finish moving to a cashless model (like the US) and then you stay at home but can't but absolutely nothing to live on.