[hydrox24]

It's a night and day difference, because the credit system is only related to your ability to repay debts.

It is neutral to, and cannot be easily and directly cooped for Government control of personal behaviour, morality, and relationships. It is not a tool of total social control. And it is not centralised to the same entity that has a monopoly on force.

[TheDong]

> the credit system is only related to your ability to repay debts.

Your credit _score_ is only related to a subset of your ability to pay debts.

The US credit system is related to far more things, including housing and jobs.

I, as a person who made a software engineer salary, but never had a credit card or student loans or any other debt, have been bounced by credit checks due to not having a credit score.

That means some apartments won't rent to me, buying a house or car is harder, etc.

I haven't personally had any job issues from it, but it's entirely legal in the US for a potential employer to reject job applicants or rescind offers based on credit check result.

The fact that a private company controls my ability to rent apartments due to this dumb system actually feels far worse to me than if the government controlled it. If the government did, they could at least know that I'd paid my bills on time for years, and had sufficient salary to obviously pay for that apartment.

> And it is not centralised to the same entity that has a monopoly on force.

How is that a good thing? We already have given the government a monopoly on force, so they already have unrestricted power over our lives... why does then giving another unrelated private company _more_ power seem better? Since the government already has 100% power over whether you go to jail or not, them also being able to say you're a good or bad debtor seems better since it doesn't give them any additional power, just a more fine-grained way to use their power.

> [all that other stuff]

Does china actually do any of that? None of the things you listed sound very concrete, to say the least.

[thereddaikon]

What Canada did to those protesters shows why you don't want it to be government controlled.

Its a sticky problem because both options suck. Would be best if we could manage to do away with the system entirely. But good luck. The financial sector holds way to much power in our society. They usually get what they want.

[dools]

> the credit system is only related to your ability to repay debts.

Is it? In Australia things like rent, electricity and phone bills all have credit checks attached. If you fail to pay bills (which I guess is a kind of debt but not one that originated with a loan) then you need to pay a large bond. If your credit score does start to slip, life becomes increasingly expensive and limits your ability to meet ongoing obligations.

> It is neutral to, and cannot be easily and directly cooped for Government control of personal behaviour, morality, and relationships.

Yes it can, for example the behaviour of poor people in rental accomodation is much more heavily policed than wealthy people who own their houses.

Poor people are stigmatised and frequently held to a higher standard because they are seen as "relying on other people's money", and the slippery slope nature of for profit credit scoring exacerbates this problem.

> It is not a tool of total social control

You've clearly never been poor, nor had any problems with your credit score.

> And it is not centralised to the same entity that has a monopoly on force.

Again, you've obviously never had a problem with your credit score. Companies that can afford to pay legal fees are definitely aligned with the same entity that has a monopoly on force.

You should get out more.

[uoaei]

Can you explain more exactly how the CCP's version achieves "total social control"? I have seen many examples of Chinese people acting in ways that are not congruent with the CCP's morality.