Posted on 11/18/2018 12:36:31 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Other governments are keenly interested in following Chinas lead.
Ive been pondering the excellent 1964 history of the Southern Song Dynastys capital of Hangzhou, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 by Jacques Gernet, in light of the Chinese governments unprecedented Social Credit Score system, which I addressed in Kafkas Nightmare Emerges: Chinas Social Credit Score.
The scope of this surveillance is so broad and pervasive that it borders on science fiction: a recent Western visitor noted that train passengers hear an automated warning on certain lines, in Mandarin and English, that their compliance with regulations will be observed and may be punished via a poor social score.
In the Song Dynasty, arguably Chinas high water mark in many ways (before the Mongol conquest changed Chinas trajectory), social control required very little force. The power of social control rested in the cultural hierarchy of Confucian values: one obeyed the familys patriarch, ones local rulers and ultimately, the Emperor.
Author Edward Luttwak made the distinction between force and power in his fascinating book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third: power is persuading people to cooperate, force is making them obey.
Power is people choosing of their own accord to comply, for reasons they find sound and that serves their self-interest; there is little need for the application of force.
Power is highly leveraged; a relatively small police/military and judiciary is all thats needed. Force, in contrast, doesnt scale: its enormously costly in capital and labor to monitor an entire populace and impose control and obedience.
(Excerpt) Read more at sgtreport.com ...
Rachel Botsman, author of Who Can You Trust? wrote...”People with low ratings will have slower internet speeds; restricted access to restaurants and the removal of the right to travel”
China’s attempting to make obedience ‘feel like’ gaming. It is a method of social control dressed up in some points-reward system. It’s ‘gamified’ obedience.
Once they get rid of cash and all of your capital is 1s and 0s on the IMF computer they can just zero out all your accounts if they decide they don’t need you anymore.
In a trendy neighbourhood in downtown Beijing, the BBC news services hit the streets in October 2015 to ask people about their Sesame Credit ratings.... Most spoke about the upsides. But then, who would publicly criticise the system? Ding, your score might go down.... Alarmingly, few people understood that a bad score could hurt them in the future. Even more concerning was how many people had no idea that they were being rated.
Interesting ......”In February 2017, the country’s Supreme People’s Court announced that 6.15 million of its citizens had been banned from taking flights over the past four years for social misdeeds. The ban is being pointed to as a step toward blacklisting in the SCS. “We have signed a memorandum [with over] 44 government departments in order to limit ‘discredited’ people on multiple levels,” says Meng Xiang, head of the executive department of the Supreme Court. Another 1.65 million blacklisted people cannot take trains.”
Yes....
A few years ago I inquired how long would it take to incorporate all banking institutions in the world into one operational system up and running. I was told at that time... ONE week. You can bet it’s down to at least a 24 hour period now or less.
Facebook, meanwhile, is now capable of identifying you in pictures without seeing your face; it only needs your clothes, hair and body type to tag you in an image with 83% accuracy. Now that’s scary!
I agree Caww.
Yeah, there are forces in china for ‘good’ which we should rememner. I don’t think they’ve been successful though.
Thread from a twitterer I respect:
https://twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/1066499165952196608
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