[darthoctopus]

Did you even read the article? Here is the situation in China:

> Here's what's actually happening. As of 2024, there's still no nationwide social credit score in China. Most private scoring systems have been shut down, and local government pilots have largely ended. It’s mainly a fragmented collection of regulatory compliance tools, mostly focused on financial behavior and business oversight. While well over 33 million businesses have been scored under corporate social credit systems, individual scoring remains limited to small pilot cities like Rongcheng. Even there, scoring systems have had "very limited impact" since they've never been elevated to provincial or national levels.

Compare that to the situation with, say, credit scores in the US --- wholly run by an oligopoly of three private companies, but fully ingrained into how personal finances work here. At least a publicly run credit score would be held accountable, however indirectly, to voters and the law; and its safety might be treated as a matter of national security, rather than having Equifax and Experian leaking data like clockwork.

[torginus]

I've always told people that social credit as used by China was unsed to track dishonest businesses who scammed people and/or other businesses by breaking agreements and not delivering as promised.

The fact there's a credit system that protects banks from the people makes it painfully obvious who is in charge of Western society - consider this:

You take out a loan to contract the company to build you a house. The company defaults and disappears overnight. The bank is protected automatically but it's up to you have to run after your money yourself.

[slightwinder]

> I've always told people that social credit as used by China was unsed to track dishonest businesses who scammed people and/or other businesses by breaking agreements and not delivering as promised.

To be fair, that's the outcome. But there has been attempts to make more problematic, more intrusive, darker versions of this. They just never worked out for technical or ethical/legal reasons. And they made a nice picture to frame the competing culture, darker than they are.

[greyw]

If your borrow money and give it to someone else and that someone else loses it how is it the borrower's fault or even problem?

[skeezyboy]

> The bank is protected automatically but it's up to you have to run after your money yourself.

oh yeah and whos guaranteeing borrowers for these banks? source would be nice but I bet you dont reply

[Animats]

Overview from 2022. One city really did set up a full social credit system, but that was a pilot project and didn't work out.[1] There are some private "social credit" systems, like the one from Ant, but that's more like a rewards program - buy stuff, get points.

China has had a lot of official social control for centuries, but it was local and managed by local cops.[2] As the population became more mobile, that wasn't enough. But a single national system never emerged.

There was a work record history, the Dang'an, created by the Party but to some extent pre-dating communism. This, again, was handled locally, by Party officials. This system didn't cope well with employee mobility. But it didn't get built into a comprehensive national system, either.

China is authoritarian, but most of the mechanisms of coercion are local. Local political bullies are a constant low-level problem.

Kind of like rural Alabama.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-an...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang%27an

[gowld]

You are conflating "social credit score", which hasn't been built out in China (although blacklisting, imprisonment, and torture for wrongthink has been built out), with "financial credit score" which exists in USA via private companies working togther, and "credit reports" which exist in both USA and China. China's is run by the unelected, dictatorial government.

[darthoctopus]

perhaps read the actual first paragraph of the article? the whole point of it is that, whether we call it that or not, our privately run reputation scores (including but not limited to credit scores) functionally are social credit scores --- except we've been boiled frogs, and should take some time for self-reflection before engaging in knee-jerk reactions to China's other failings (which I'm not denying btw) whenever social credit is brought up.

[timeon]

In US they have just one more party than in China. Also 1 person is not automatically 1 vote.

[NoGravitas]

In effect, the difference is much less than you imply.