Every banking system has some kind of credit score. Social scoring is what’s relatively new and has to keep us on edge because also governments of mostly free societies have a natural interest in such systems.
Comment on Russia launches "social rating" platform to determine a person’s comparative “social status”
tudor@lemmy.world 2 months agoYou see, in the States, your credit score is an indication of how likely you are to be responsible and comply with the terms of a loan or other bank-related contract. If you have a low score, you don’t get a loan, because the bank sees you as a risk that you will not give their money back.
In China, a low social credit score, which is earned by disrespecting the regime or not following the silliest of laws, forbids you from using public transport, buying stuff, or getting education.
You can’t miss that contrast.
RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Indeed, thank you for some lucidity.
DRStamm@lemmy.world 2 months ago
While you’re right that there’s a vast difference between a credit score and a social credit score, I would argue that the US credit score system does have a bigger impact on one’s life than just not being able to get a loan. It is used to deny housing and employment and makes purchases more expensive due to higher payback rates. Since so much of our economy is built on consumer spending without the needed growth in wages over the last fifty or so years, some kind of personal debt is needed especially for people with low incomes who have to cover essentials one way or the other. It creates a self-reinforcing spiral that keeps poor people poor.
Things have improved here and there with the CFPB and some anti-discrimination ordinances at the local level, but it’s hardly enough to narrow the effect as you described. Heck, it took us until the Biden administration to propose to ban medical debt from affecting credit scores.
In both cases, these scoring systems are part of a suite of incentives to get people to play by the rules of the power structures that exist: social credit for national authoritarians hierarchies and TransEquiSperiFax for the authority of capitalist hierarchies.
Again, you’re not completely wrong and I don’t want to claim that one system is anywhere close to being as pernicious as the other, but the US system not quite so harmless as you say. Sorry for making this so US-centric but that’s where I have the most perspective.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And yet you still try to conflate the two… interesting.
tudor@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Thanks for sharing your insight!