USA is heading down this road, too. 21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt. This is ass backwards and destructive thinking. I am certain this is just the start of greater restrictions on the unfortunate.
As I've been reminded countless times, "driving is a privilege not a right". You can lose your license for all kinds of 'unfair' reasons that do not make sense, and I agree it's heavy handed to include student loan debt, but until it is Federally acknowledged that all citizens have a right to drive (after passing proper license tests), then this downward progression will continue.
In California you can't even register your vehicle if you're behind on your child support payments. (I need my job to make payments. I can't get to my job without my car.)
According to this quora answer [1] that quotes a whole bunch of court cases, the whole 'privilege, not a right' thing is bullshit.
Try taking it to the logical conclusion - what else is a privilege, and can therefore be arbitrarily denied? A bank account? Traveling by plane or train? Connecting your house to the power/water/sewage grid? Having a post address? Buying or renting a house? Sending your children to school? If you buy this logic, there's a whole bunch of 'privileges' that the state can deny you using some excuse, that would make living utterly impossible.
That the state takes away this right doesn't mean you should call it a privilege, just as you wouldn't call freedom a privilege because an innocent man was jailed.
Not to mention, we've built our whole society around driving. If we were built like the Netherlands, it'd be one thing, but driving is a necessity in the USA. Take it away and people can't even function in most places.
Yes, but be careful with the argument that it's bad because it forbids a necessity. It doesn't defend activities that are less 'necessary'. You don't need a soldering iron at home - the registered one at work is plenty. You don't need a decompiler, or a rooted smartphone, or to run unsigned kernels, or your own mail server. One by one, activities you're permitted to do can be chipped away, till all that's left is work and consuming sanitized entertainment.
I don't agree that it's a right, but these things are definitely needs that the government should ensure access to. I think of rights as things like equality and free speech. Calling it a privilege and pretending it's something you can just do without is insane. Healthcare is a similar issue. I don't think it's a right, yet I'm shocked by the number of people out there that literally want others to die, so they don't have to pay money.
Sure, but none of that changes the fact that suspending someone's driving privilege as a punishment for failing to pay a debt is incredibly stupid and counterproductive.
That's if you're oriented on policy goals like getting the debt where it's owed by providing consequences that aren't crippling and keeping the individual who owes it in the best position to actually repay.
There are people who think in very different terms, where the primary goal is protecting a moral norm they have in mind, and the focus (possibly even "obsession") is going to be doing that by exacting a punishment as a disincentive and example. Taking away a privilege is an obvious choice. Whether it's related is unimportant; what's important is whether it hurts. If the cascading effects are considered at all to someone who thinks like this (and I want to stress here that involves a level of analysis that may be second nature for you but is quite likely actually a stretch for many of the people I'm talking about here) then those cascading effects may well be considered good: the fact of making a debt less likely to be repaid is secondary to making it harder for the subject deserving of the punishment. The pain is the point.
Now, you might respond "is there evidence that this kind of punitive approach actually leads to overall better outcomes?" And that's a very good question, but again, it's the kind of question someone who cautiously approaches the question of punishment with considerations of counterproductivity in mind would ask.
Yes, some people choose to cut off their nose to spite their face. I'm not one of those people. I think people who are willing to make life worse for everyone in service of some moral ideology are idiots, and they make me question the wisdom of democracy.
My values and yours probably overlap -- I'd agree that whatever penalties you might hand out to someone not making child support, taking away a DL is counterproductive.
But I think it's probably a values/temperament issue, which isn't necessarily an intelligence issue, and might need different solutions.
The evidence is that incarceration just doesn’t work to deter crime or discourage recidivism. But America has the largest prison population in the world, and IIRC, the largest proportion of its own citizens in prison.
In a country that values punishment over any empirical improved outcomes, I wouldn’t hold my breath for people to care that taking a driver’s license away for unpaid support will end up hurting the children involved, or society as a whole.
I didn't really need someone to come along and serve as an example of not only some of the forms of thinking I talked about above but also as "criminal as sub-human other (not decent folks like me and mine)", but I guess it's a convenient underscoring of the idea that some people approach society very, very differently.
Agreed. Most of us rely on driving to reach the workplace. It's not only a mere inconvenience to lose your licence, it's basically severing your access to your main source of financial support and could send you spiralling down in debts for a long time.
Sure, not meeting your responsibilities has to be dealt with and have consequences, but the consequences shouldn't have to be catastrophic and put you into an unrecoverable situation to act as a deterrent.
I was once sitting in a courtroom for something unrelated and saw a 19 year old kid go to jail for 3 months for not paying child support. Not sure how he's going to pay it back in there, but if all you have is a hammer...
Was he really sent to jail for not paying child support, or was it actually for contempt of court? People generally can't be jailed for debt. But if the subject of a child support order has money and refuses to may, or refuses to take reasonable steps to earn some income, then sometimes the judge has to administer an object lesson on the importance of fulfilling one's obligations. Judges usually don't take that step unless the defendant has demonstrated a long history of irresponsible behavior.
It was awhile ago so I don't remember correctly, but you might be right. I just remember thinking this was rooted in the debt he had to pay, and removing his ability to pay the debt, while ostensibly serving to teach him a lesson, didn't seem constructive. Perhaps it was the correct thing to do, perhaps not, it just seemed sad.
That's certainly not the first remedy that the court has taken.
But say, if he hadn't been sent to prison, would he have paid child support then?
We all don't know, but I strongly suspect no, and I strongly suspect the court has more than just my suspicions and calibrated its reaction accordingly.
>But say, if he hadn't been sent to prison, would he have paid child support then?
The amount could have been ordered to be taken from his bank account, or confiscated from his salary directly from his employer or payment system, or taken from his property.
There's absolutely nothing that necessitates that he is sent to prison if he merely can't pay.
Only if he has money and doesn't pay (and that after accounting for his food and rent expenses at a nominal minimal fee), or hides money that he could have used to pay.
Smith County Texas will eventually get sued for this for indefinite imprisonment. There have been a few cases there where they put people in jail for 'contempt of court' for not paying child support. They throw the person in jail, then as that date comes up they demand the person pay further due child support, and keep said person in jail, but since it's a new charge they can keep doing it again and again and again.
Child support can be based on imputed income. Where income is imputed, it does not exist, e.g., you do not have to pay tax on imputed dollars because they don't exist. So there are no bank accounts to seize because they cannot contain imputed dollars. If a person doesn't have a W-2 salary, there is nothing to garnish. In these cases, courts can and do order the debtor to prison.
I think it would be an interesting choice, that if you're sent to jail for lack of payment towards child support ( or any other debt ), the government pays your debt up to the point you get out.
This would have the unintended consequence of poor people voluntarily going to prison as a means of payment. The social implications of this would be devistating. class stratification is already a major issue in the country. The last thing we need is literal debtors prison.
Market solutions and the Justice system rarely intersect, and this is certainly an area where they should not.
The crazy reality of that situation is that people will continue to drive when the license is suspended (because they need to). I made this mistake living in Florida years ago and was literally arrested, booked, and spent a night in jail.
The only viable non-car using way to access these areas is an eBike, and even then some areas have super aggressive drivers that are happy to run you over. Unsurprisingly, people aren't too keen on walking/scootering/biking in these conditions :c
I hear that the battery I have can do 40 miles of range in flatter terrain. Here in hilly Seattle, I get 10 miles of range on it. Slower speeds also gets more range, I definitely am sacrificing range for speed when going 30mph :P
As an unrelated aside, it's also a weird phrase (though absolutely common in usage!) as the privileges of the nobles and peers, for example, were way more difficult for the crown to abrogate than were the ordinary rights of mere commoners. Privileges were strong. Maybe being able to employ, and deploy, your own soldiers would have some effect on that.
It would probably be better if the phrase were "a grant not a right" or "a license not a right", but I guess that's not as catchy.
The point being missed: they'd stop you from taking trains or whatever if it wasn't the driver's license. The idea is to make your life miserable so you would pay, so whatever ticks you, they'll do.
Sad that you're getting downvoted, but it's true. Almost all US cities are pretty terrible to get around in without a car. That's bad for people's budgets generally, but it's especially bad for the poor/working class where a car represents a substantial financial burden, and of course some other demographics like the handicapped, elderly, and college students.
Plus it's more expensive for the government, causes more pollution, generates more danger, and hurts people's health. Not a lot of upside there.
Wow, that’s crazy. As long as you have auto insurance and a clean driving record, it doesn’t make logical sense to reprimand your license as it could cause a cash flow problem if you can’t commute to work, or have to take a worse job potentially.
Driving being a privilege, not a right, is only awkward in the US because of how absurdly car dominant it is. Being unable to drive in many other developed countries is barely an issue for most people.
To my knowledge, other developed countries where driving seems really necessary for most people are Canada and Australia, maybe NZ?
Admittedly I'm far from an expert in this, but I live in Germany now, have visited a bunch of countries in Europe, plus Japan, and that's certainly the impression I get. Right now our family of 3 living in a sleepy part of Munich gets by fine without a car, and we've visited lots of little suburbs and towns in Germany that are still highly walkable/bikable, with decent transit connections.
Not that having a car wouldn't be a big convenience bonus for us sometimes, but it doesn't feel critical at all.
I, like about 50% of people living in Vantaa, commute to different city for work. I'm not sure how many of them actually use public transport for commute, but as overall public transport usage is around 50%. I don't think there's big difference between the usage between working within Vantaa or going to different city as that city is usually Helsinki or Espoo.
Commute wise they are all part of same region while legally they are different cities. I don't think that's extremely uncommon arrangement in some larger cities in Europe.
I live in Europe, driving is not needed. You hop on a train or on a bus, although if you have work 100 km away you wouls have some arrangements to live there for some part of the week commuting 100 km daily is unpleasant.
Unless your destination is in some rural village that is not reachable by train/bus, like closest bus stop is 5 km away you don't need a car, it is more convenient sure but not essential.
I have colleagues at work that are from small towns 100+km they rent a flat in the city here and go home on weekends, by train or car.
I said it's barely an issue for most people. Not barely an issue for everyone.
> Try getting to a different province/city etc, easily 30-100km away or more on "public transit".
I seriously considered commuting from Augsburg to Munich by train. Some of my co-workers do this. It's actually not that bad, train ride is about half an hour for 50km. Faster than driving, that's for sure.
Well, what if you do one of jobs that require you to drive? Bus drivers, taxi drivers, truckers, delivery people, etc, are not lesser citizens...
Plus, who said people in the developed countries don't commute, or that even if they have public transport, having to and waste extra hour or hours in many cases (to wait at stops and to change buses or subway lines, etc), is small matter in the extra effort, free time, and health impact on the person doing it compared to being able to just drive there?
Not everybody in Europe lives in Amsterdam or some such city, nicely close to walking distance or a single public transit line to work.
> Well, what if you do one of jobs that require you to drive?
Don't do the thing that gets your license revoked? And if it happens, get a different job?
> Plus, who said people in the developed countries don't commute, or that even if they have public transport, having to and waste extra hour or hours in many cases (to wait at stops and to change buses or subway lines, etc), is small matter in the extra effort, free time, and health impact on the person doing it compared to being able to just drive there?
Well, if it's just convenience, then that seems to fit the definition of privilege, no?
> Not everybody in Europe lives in Amsterdam or some such city, nicely close to walking distance or a single public transit line to work.
This is a ridiculous strawman. You don't need to live in a major world city to have effective non-driving commute options around.
>Don't do the thing that gets your license revoked? And if it happens, get a different job?
There are some comments that make me think "I want to see all these things happen to that person, to see how casually they'll dismiss the problem then, and if they'll ever figure out what empathy means".
Really makes you wish those people losing their car and their job, because they fell behind on some student debt payment, and being unable to rise out of it. Add perhaps a few problems real people in those situations (which for them are dismissed as mere "personal failings) have, like spouses or parents or kids to take care of, some personal sickness, and so on. Maybe experiencing real life will help do with the smugness?
>Well, if it's just convenience, then that seems to fit the definition of privilege, no?
Being able to laugh away the pain of people in such situations (because you never were close to that, or have safety nets all around) fits the definition of privilege better.
>As I've been reminded countless times, "driving is a privilege not a right".
That's just a BS saying, not some rule of nature.
Societies should define what is a privilege and what is a right.
Do you think if there was a referendum on this specific matter (and not tied to 200 other policy questions, like general elections are), people would vote that "yeah, indeed driving is a privilege"?
>Societies should define what is a privilege and what is a right.
That's a hard no. I see where you're going with this, and we likely agree on 90% of this topic anyway, but the issue with society defining rights is that you end up letting the mob decide the "right" of green eyed people to live has just become a privilege.
Rights stem from nature, and exist with, or without society. If a society wants to add to the list, they're more than welcome to do so. Those are usually called privileges and its up to the society to attach proper protections to them.
>but the issue with society defining rights is that you end up letting the mob decide the "right" of green eyed people to live has just become a privilege.
That's what those in power try to sell, who think they know better, and that the people are savage animals that need to be kept in place.
In reality, the worse atrocities have been performed not by mobs, or at least not by mobs on their own, but by well educated, powerful people. All those gentlemen slave owners in the South, all those smooth talking Nazi higher ups (with support from Germanys financial elites), the higher echelons of USSR Party power, colonial gentlemen, and so on. Mobs have nothing on them.
>Rights stem from nature, and exist with, or without society.
There are no rights in nature -- something anyone who ventures outside of society (in a jungle, in the woods, etc) will very soon find out. Nobody in nature (outside of a human community) will ever protect their live to live, property, or anything else.
Rights are a social contract, made because man is a conscious, social, animal. The problem is that the contract is more often than not, presented like Terms of Use, already written from those in power.
There are definitely rights which are artificial and not natural, for example the right to be free from prosecution without a trial jury. The right to vote is kind of in there too.
I think it's more accurate to say that rights (in the original setting) are a list of things that the law cannot prohibit you.
Legal rights are things that society decides you're entitled to. Natural rights are basically theological in origin. Violating them transgresses the natural law regardless of what society decides (or even whether society exists, I guess).
It seems you're only considering legal rights, possibly because natural rights are difficult to justify from a secular perspective.
I'm not actually trying to distinguish at all -- the OP spoke of rights stemming from nature, and, as you said, any you'd describe as such are basically theological in nature.
The thought experiment I'd run is, just like the one of science vs religion: start from scratch, look for the rights that every society has in common.
Property? Nope. Freedom of speech, association, whatever? Nope. The one I think might be universal would be the right to marry someone; I can't think of ever reading about a society where the right to marry and start a family was not a part of it. (Which we also don't really recognize as an explicit right anywhere in modern society, do we?)
Wow! That's pretty interesting. Do you happen to remember the names of any?
And maybe there isn't anything universal to societies that's considered as "right".
Sort of opposite -- things forbidden -- I've heard from some biologist that the only universally forbidden behavior (no society has ever generally permitted it) is incestuous relationships.
Everything else, you'd find some society somewhere that's okay with it.
That makes sense from a biological perspective, too, that we as a species would be hard-wired not to allow it. That might be as close as an "in nature" thing as you might find, something our brains are hard-wired to discourage.
It's a US thing. Most folks here have very little exposure to political philosophy unless they seek it out or major in something at least adjacent to it in college, and the bit they do is almost all Locke's concept of natural rights, by way of Paine. Neither figure is typically read, only mentioned and briefly summarized. Like, that's it. Beginning and end. Whole thing.
That the concept is... not trivial to defend, in these our modern times, and further that it may not have much practical use beyond its value in propaganda (which is real and shouldn't be dismissed and, I suppose, is furthered by the sort of education above) isn't really covered.
Those are just words on a document some old people wrote. Not a law of nature.
The only thing keeping then "unalienated" is actual people, with guns and jails, etc, to prevent others from alienating them.
And even so, those people keep unalienated whatever they're ordered to keep by those who pay their salaries. In practice those rights have been alienated time and again, whenever those wanted it.
Yes, and I'm of the position that there is no such thing as an inalienable right; that that too is a human invention and that that too is entirely up to people to defend. I also think this is a defensible position, hence my request to see the "rights molecule".
That isn't to say I don't think certain rights should be held as universal, or that some aren't worth dying for, I certainly do.
I just think there isn't a facet of human society that is not, in fact, ultimately a human invention (within the constraints of the pressures evolution has wired into our brains, like proscriptions on incest.)
And, frankly, we should all be proud of what we can build, as a species.
The Tenth says that the rights are "reserved to the states or to the people". A state suspending your driver license would simply claim that it is their right to do so.
I'm skeptical that the Supreme Court would agree that a right to drive is one of those rights. Not only did driving not exist when the tenth amendment was proposed or ratified, nowhere in the world (to the best of my knowledge) is driving treated as a right.
There is nothing more expensive than being poor. Once you hit a certain level of poverty especially if you become entangled in the criminal justice system it becomes readily apparent that the system is designed to simply milk you of any resources including your freedom as that can be profitable for corporations.
Poor people deal with obstacles that people with means never even think about. For example, Florida just voted to restore voting rights to felons and now the state legislature is attempting to change the will of the voting public to state that only felons that have all court costs and fines paid can vote.
Public defenders are another example, if you are poor and charged with a crime your defense is worth ~30 minutes of a low paid attorney's time which results in higher fines and/or jail time and the cycle continues.
5% of Americans take public transit to get to work. I wouldn't call that an almost certainty that you need a car. An almost certainty would be maybe under <.001%
If there was a 5% the market would crash 50% tomorrow. Would you call that an almost certainty that it wouldn't happen? You wouldn't hedge your risk? If there was a 5% that you would die tomorrow, you wouldn't feel concerned?
What are you talking about? If 5% of the workforce showed up tomorrow, what do you think would happen? How'd you feel if you had a 5% chance of having transport to work?
5% is "huge" when considering probability of a "catastrophic" event compounded over time, because what you're really thinking of is "expected value over a year" or something like that. This 5 percent, by contrast, is a fraction of a population.
For example: There's a 95% chance I forgot about my tea and it ended up cold. We now ask "Do you expect my tea to be cold?" and can ask "On a scale of not certain to very certain, how certain are you?" I'm very certain my tea is cold. Now to forget it in the microwave.
I'm wealthy enough to live in a place where commuting by public transit is practical. I should move to a car-only distance to save money, but end up spending it on the luxury of convenience.
That's the whole point. Auto debt is usually the first payment people make since they absolutely need it to go to work. By tying student debt to the ability to drive, they're putting it on the same tier of priorities for people.
> Auto debt is usually the first payment people make since they absolutely need it to go to work. By tying student debt to the ability to drive, they're putting it on the same tier of priorities for people.
But what if you don't have auto debt? That logic doesn't work if someone bought a car they could afford.
Almost 50% of the car-owning US population relies on debt to purchase their vehicle [1]. There isn't any data on this, but I think it's safe to assume that younger people that also have student loans don't own their vehicle outright compared to older people that are well into their careers or retirement.
> There isn't any data on this, but I think it's safe to assume that younger people that also have student loans don't own their vehicle outright
I dunno, having an owned-outright used beater seemed normal among my peer group when I was in/just out of college; having newer, better (relative to contemporaries) vehicles with financing is more common now that we're very well into careers. You can get a student loan with no credit history at pretty much the same terms as everyone else, but that is decidedly not he case for auto loans.
I was wondering about how prevalent this is - I've never had a car emissions-tested - and it looks like 31 states + DC have emissions testing in at least some part of the state [0]. Just glancing over this list, it looks like several states only test in metro areas, or otherwise have exceptions; even California has counties which do not test for emissions.
Specifically, it looks like several states exempt from testing cars from the mid 90s and older. Lots of those still on the road.
So those who didn't (for instance, I didn't have a car loan while I was paying off my student loan debt) should be punished by removing their means of transportation because that'll somehow get them to prioritize it at the same level as said paid-for car (which keep gas in it and change it's oil once in a while)? If an ex student is still living with mom and dad or using a borrowed car to get to work, there's an actual logical reason that their ability to get to that job should be compromised because they didn't pay their student debt?
Again, I'm not advocating for this system, all the points you make are completely valid.
That said, this will move the needle for almost 50% of that population. Student debt is already non-dischargeable, and delinquencies are hitting record highs every quarter. Creditors are just trying to collect any way they can.
There's a lot of factors at work: the cost of education is insane, student loans are very easy to get, there is a ton of pressure to go to college, it's hard to think long term when you're 18, financial literacy is poor through high school, etc.
21 will suspend your driver's license? What's the source on that? I'm getting that some states will block renewal of professional licenses, not driver's licenses. Still horrible, still a terrible situation, but not the same kind of gut check a driver's license suspension would be.
That’s so self defeating. I can see garnishing wages or something but not paying debt is completely divorced from the privilege to drive. Someone just thought “punishment!”
>21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt.
I can't find anything on this. I can find 22 states that can suspend some kind of state issued license if you fall behind on your student loan debt, but only 2 that say they can suspend your driver's license, and apparently those 2 don't really do it very often.
I think you misread an article talking about professional licenses.
>USA is heading down this road, too. 21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt.
How are those two connected?!
And what if you need to have a car to ...keep a job and pay your debt (seeing that many cities are built for cars, and not everyone has the luxury to live close to work, or even have a basic public transport).
Interesting the replies to this went in the well-trod direction of "why does the US require everyone to drive a car?" and not the equally indignant "why does the US force students to go into debt?"
Cyclist here. I'm amazed by how much money people spend on their vehicles. I have an expensive bike (about $1000 new), and aside from perhaps $100-$200 on maintenance and equipment per year, I spend nothing else for daily transportation. It's hard for cars to compete with that on cost. I think suspending someone's drivers' license due to debts could help reduce one's transportation spending.
Unfortunately, much of the US is car dependent, so taking away someone's license is net counterproductive because one's income typically would decrease beyond the savings without their car.
It's a horrible idea. Lots of people get laid off or lose their jobs for various reasons. Taking away their transportation is a psychotic approach to debt collection.
In many areas, cities are cutting bus service to poor areas. The city I used to live in removed all but one route which left stranded or made transportation very difficult for a lot of people. The city I live in now simply cancelled their entire bus program.
The war on poverty doesn't mean what a lot of administrators think it means.
I'm also a cyclist, and spent most of my life biking exclusively, but not everyone is in a position to replace their car. If your car commute is 45 minutes on the highway, a bicycle is not going to help you when you lose your license.
I would happely bike 45 min to work 7 months a year when it's not freezing and I did so, till I left academia and took a industry job 45 min away with car.
The main problem for commuting efficiency is housing and barrier of entry for getting a job close to where I live or vice versa.
Higher density means the grocery store is a 7 minute walk away rather than a 15 to 20 minute drive. Same goes for other destinations, though housing bubbles like what is occurring right now have inflicted needless commuting on many workers.
Right, and a 45 minute car commute that can't be replaced by public transit is...well, not uniquely American, but certainly a hell of a lot more common in the US than most other developed countries.
...is this data reliable? It seems to contradict other studies I've seen. And I don't just mean that it contradicts the parts that support my point. I was under the impression that Japan had generally longer commutes than the US, for example.
But in any case, it doesn't seem to contradict anything that I said.
I just tend to get a bit suspicious when problems are described as being particular to the US or worse in the US than in other places. I find that in many cases that is just not true. So I tend to poke around and see what I can see.
I wasn't saying that the length of the commute itself was unusual, but rather that it was a lengthy car commute that was unable to be replaced by public transit.
In the case of many other countries, like Japan or Germany, most people's commutes can be accomplished reasonably efficiently with public transportation (often public transportation is even faster due to traffic).
Your views of bike activists do not match my experience.
> It's always cringy when bike activists just assume that everybody can get to work on a bike fast and without sweating.
My experience is that people tend to have an inaccurate view of what bike activists believe. I think few would say that most people can switch to cycling without major issues.
As for sweating, my experience is that cyclists tend to argue that some sweating is acceptable, not that people won't sweat. I can recall some people discussing how to reduce how much you sweat to a minimum, but I can't recall anyone claiming that you won't sweat at all.
> But the whole discussion tends to veer into fat shaming real quick.
Having participated in and observed many conversations about cycling, I can't recall that happening once. Can you point out an example?
I'm sure it works great in some areas, but its completely unrealistic in others. Try running errands in Metro Detroit on a bike and come back and talk to me.
With that said I would prefer if the municipalities were more bike friendly in the first place. I like driving, but I was certainly happiest when I lived in a different town and could bike to work.
To reiterate a point I made in another reply, I'm not advocating for cycling here, just pointing out that driving is expensive.
Also, I know an engineer who works on diesel engines in Detroit and commutes by bike. He seems to think Detroit is pretty good for cycling, actually, contrary to what I expected. Don't know about metro Detroit, though.
Downtown Detroit is ok for biking, certainly. The metro area though is so spread out I just don't see a realistic alternative. Sorry to jump on you like that, I agree driving is expensive but when everything in our lives is separated by dozens of miles, connected by streets where cars move at deadly speeds next to paper-thin bike lanes, its difficult to see an alternative.
I'd love it if there as a pan-Southeast-Michigan light rail to happen, but doesn't seem realistic with all the other infrastructure issues Michigan is having right now. Best we can hope for right now is that Q line gets extended out from downtown Detroit up to Royal Oak or Birmingham, but even that is a whole can of worms that Dan Gilbert would have to push for for there to be a chance at it.
I cycle too and don't own a car, but I live in a lucky spot grandfathered in before the rent rose. I'm all for more transit options if they actually exist. You can't reduce car usage without allowing access to alternatives.
I'm glad you like to bike. Bikes don't go 60 miles an hour, which is necessary for some individuals who work an hour or more from their residence. And no, people don't do that sort of thing because they enjoy it. They do it because they have to. Please don't ruin people's lives with your ideas.
> Bikes don't go 60 miles an hour, which is necessary for some individuals who work an hour or more from their residence. And no, people don't do that sort of thing because they enjoy it. They do it because they have to. Please don't ruin people's lives with your ideas.
Reread my post, as I don't think you're responding to what I wrote. I don't advocate taking away someone's license because of debts, which I believe I made clear in the last paragraph.
Can you explain which parts you believe are lecturing drivers? My post was meant to offer my perspective as a cyclist: driving is more expensive than many appreciate. I wasn't arguing that it was unnecessary; quite the opposite.
I don't know what you mean by "Please don't ruin people's lives with your ideas" if you were not referring to taking away someone's license because of debt. As I stated, I don't believe someone should lose their drivers' license because of debt.
What is the idea I have that would ruin peoples' lives?
Just some perspective. I know this is not what you wrote, and probably not what you meant, but what I was thinking when reading your comment was "Car owners are extravagant. I spend a lot on my bike and still spend so much less money than them. Maybe if we suspended licenses some would get a clue."
I'm probably not alone in reading it that way, and I'd say many of us would be offended.
What I meant was this: Driving is expensive, so one might argue that removing one's ability to drive would help them save money, but that doesn't work when a drivers' license is needed to generate income in the first place.
Both. There are multiple factors here. Reducing transportation costs is one factor (what I meant by "could help"), but typically one's income reduces even more, so on net it is counterproductive. I'll edit the post to be more clear.
Likely they saw him 'bashing cars' and immediately downvoted. People on HN tend to reflexively downvote opinions like this as unrealistic (if it was non-reflexive, they would've seen the caveat at the end there).
You mean today if you owe a large sum amount of money to another person or entity, you can get away with it when there are court rulings against you? I am on next flight to New York!
I keep saying this, and while in some cases it's arguably very much deserved, we're already here. We have a very Scarlett letter mentality. Don't get dinged once or your life is ruined. We even see something like getting fired (which can happen for many reasons), as an albotrose a person should carry forever.
Obviously, I need to point out that in many ways we're not like China, and plenty of people who get fired, commit crimes, lose their drivers licenses, default on debt, ect. live happy and prosperous lives.
I also want the government out of the educational loan business and think that some of the financial risk should be borne by the educational institutions.
Making educational loans dischargeable in bankruptcy sounds reasonable on the surface but it problematic when you consider that a newly minted college graduate basically has no assets. Allowing the loan to be dischargeable would encourage graduates to immediately declare bankruptcy to get rid of their student loans. Not sure what the solution is there other than not making the risky loan in the first place.
The federal government took over student loan financing, not state governments. The federal government doesn't run state DMVs, and they don't make rules about suspending state licenses. And the OP is mistaken about 21 states suspending driver's licenses.
Also the Federal government used to guarantee the debt. Now they finance it directly. They were always the ones on the hook.
This is not the social credit system(edit based on OP comment: the dystopic social credit system that people are afraid of). This is just the list of discredited people("Shi Xin Zhe" list) published by China's court system. The whole list is published on http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/
You don't end up on the list for simply owing money (and it has nothing to do with social mis/conduct), you end up on the list for being sued over the money you owe, and the court determining that you do have to pay and that you have the ability to pay based on your personal financials (or if you refuse to disclose your personal financials to the court), and you still refuse to pay. Hence why its maintained by the court system.
The word "Lao Lai" that is quoted to describe them in the article is literally "long term renege".
> you end up on the list for being sued over the money you owe
You mean like the summary judgments that can be leveled against debtors in the US by debt collection agencies...
And which...ding your credit score. Which makes it harder to get credit...secure a loan...(sometimes) get housing...(sometimes) get a job
Versus...institutional segregation and denial of services by the government. Definitely not even in the same ballpark and definitely an artifact of the "social credit system" as described by the authors of this article in other comments here as being an accumulated set of practices and programs in China - no single thing.
No, I mean like how in the US the creditor can get the court to let them take your property (except certain exempt things like your primary residence) and garnish your wages.
Inkstone editor and OP here. This IS China's social credit system. Lists of discredited people, often published by Chinese courts, are the primary mechanism by which punishment is meted out.
They are only the same in the broad sense of a social credit system, but the two credits are not the same.
The social credit score system is an actual scoring system based on your overall social activities, including both financial and non-financial (e.g. the rightfully dreaded political/religious activity). No nobody knows exactly how it works and no one I know in China actually knows their score or anything even qualitative about their score.
The discredited list is just a yes or no list based on court judgement for your financial debt, nothing more and nothing less. It is a public list and there is a clear way to end up on it.
There is no nationwide social credit score system, and there's certainly no large-scale effort to score people based on their political and religious activity as part of China's social credit system. For more informed and nuanced understanding of what China's "social credit" is, I invite you to read Inkstone's earlier story: https://www.inkstonenews.com/society/chinas-social-credit-sy...
Also I have stumbled on this talk video from a conference is seems some time ago: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9904-the_social_credit_system and speaker also says that there is no one system but rather a large amount of smaller local systems with different sets of rules being trialed in different areas. So it seems more like trial and error and the best picks live on.
what mentioned in your article has nothing to do with the social credit system. as already mentioned in your own article, it is all about the "laolai" list maintained by courts. This system has been there for over a decade or longer, way earlier the title-bait so called "social credit system".
To give you a few examples - [1][2] are news articles discussing the exact same "laolai" list almost 10 years ago.
Debt-related blacklists have been around before China's cabinet announced its intention to set up a nation-wide social credit system by 2020, but they ARE part of the social credit system. They're not exclusionary.
Just a remark from someone who doesn't have a dog in this fight: I found your dogmatic refutations above using all caps IS & ARE not particularly confidence inspiring nor terribly professional.
Would not have made this remark about an ordinary commenter but I would expect better from an editor.
Thanks for the feedback. I had intended the styling for emphasis, but I can imagine how it might not communicate well with some people.
My refutations are based on clearly worded, non-ambiguous official documents characterizing court ordered blacklists as part of China's social credit system.
Here's the Chinese Supreme People's Court's website. http://shixin.court.gov.cn/index.html The statement front and center explains that the blacklists are promulgated "to promote the building of a social credit system."
15 out of the most recent 30 submissions from your account are China related news, 94% of them are negative. Citing such publicly available stats that can be easily verified by the public is now considered as personal attack? Keep arguing whether 94% or 100% of your submissions are negative doesn't really change anything.
Maybe inkstonenews.com only publish negative China related news articles or you intentionally only submit those negative ones from inkstonenews.com to NH? What is the story here?
No, I didn’t refer to your citing of my previous submissions as a personal attack. I referred to a different part of your comment, since deleted. Anyway, this exchange doesn’t add any value to the discussion. Have a nice and peaceful day.
60% of your submissions are news about China, 94% of them are negative ones. You then mention the word "peaceful", dear god, that is something you need to seek very hard.
I am asking something very simple here - how submitting all negative news adding value to the NH? Are you suggesting that only negative news related to China are considered as newsworthy by you and your site? Or maybe all news come out of China are negative?
The Chinese government advertises that system as one based on all kinds of activity. Political/religious are just examples since those are usually the focal points in matters like these.
The system is claimed to be backed by big data, and sure you can say there is no numerical score but come on.
Again, there is no one "system". The system discussed here, 失信人名单, has nothing to do with social networks, it's operated by the courts.
The video discussed below goes into this in detail, discussing what does exist, what experiments there are, and where the researcher thinks China is heading.
Thanks for this. Alarmist reports of a Black Mirror style social credit system in China have really distorted many people's understanding of the reality of the system, which, to begin with, isn't just one thing.
It's weird I tried to submit that list as it's own submission on hacker news and it seemed to be doing well but then suddenly I couldn't I couldn't see it under new.
This comes across as far, far more self-destructive than just a social credit scoring system, it really comes across as children playing with fire they don't understand.
All Fractional reserve lending systems replace capital with debt in the form of checks; A Loan made from a cash deposit comes back to the bank as collaterol on that debt, and as a new deposit which can create a new debt. The bank expects to be solvent because it can sell the loan to another bank to raise cash to cover the deposit, but in reality, what ends up happening is the ratio of cash to checks grows rapidly driving inflation. Inflation drives interest rates upward since nobody loans at less the rate of inflation. Interest rates, and the banks propensity not to spend more than they take in from interest, locks society into a game of musical chairs for repayment.
This is a politically unstable situation for bankers because nobody likes the idea of forcing honest people into bankruptcy and stealing their property, except perhaps a few very greedy and shortsighted bankers and politicians at the top of the heirarchy. This produces all sorts of laws and regulations, aka "compromises" which allow the ratio to continue to grow, and at some point the velocity of capital is insufficient to service the interest on existing debts at which point we begin forcing risk into places within the economic system it does not belong. We stopped publishing M.3 when it was at around 56 trillion, that is a ratio of around 56:1. M2 to M0 and M1 to M0 are two other ratio's to watch.
Ergo, we have not deflated the US housing market since 2007, and continue to drive prices to unaffordable levels. Assuming one has the cash to purchase a house, one must now contend with the risk of an impared title and a bankrupt title insurance company. Jobs can't pay living wages because businesses are saddled with business debts, and Governments don't enforce their laws because they too are bankrupt. The stock market is over-inflated from hedge funds and HFT games. List goes on.
Eventually you end up reducing the number of checks in the system forcefully through bankruptcy, such as through an economic crash, or you destroy price signalling mechanisms within the economy which leads to an economic collapse. A good measure of a collapse is fertility rates, birth rates and average life expectancy. When the USSR Fell, their fertility rate was down to 1.2 births per women; the US currently sits at 1.72. 2.1 births per women is replacement. Birth rates are falling because women are having kids later in life, and live expectancy is dropping due to an increased suicide rate. These rates tend to drop suddenly once society becomes too far taxed by the way, as the USSR's statistics shows.
Our discussion about $15 an hour minimum wages is very much so a discussion about forcing rich people into bankruptcy so the average working Joe can have basics in life and society can be stable. We can make correlations to history, but at the end of the day, there's a lack of concrete data to proove out the above pattern of behaivour and the people running the economic system, including doctorretes in economics, don't fully understand these mechanisms.
What China has managed to do here is create a class of permanent underdogs for whom the game is rigged and force them to literally compete against the rich for life and liberty. Literally the rich are eating people alive. This is an unstable, shortsighted arrangement; the chinese do not have a good grasp of how technology impacts society and are not interested in learning about how its has impacted other countries. They risk creating a powderkeg of permanent underdogs and a business culture of not making investments due to the risk or not engaging with the government due to the regulations. All of that will challenge their ability to remain stable and is likely to result in an eventual collapse.
Anytime a criticism of China's social credit score is brought up, there's always a "yeah but US credit score", yet I still don't understand how the two are even in the same ballpark.
The social credit score in China is far more invasive and penalizes you for associating yourself with individuals who have low scores.
To compare the two is disingenuous and reaks of whataboutism
> The social credit score in China... penalizes you for associating yourself with individuals who have low scores.
This isn't the same social credit that is mentioned in this article. What you're describing is a speculated feature of a social credit system that doesn't even exist yet.
OP and Inkstone editor here. You're right. As scary as it may sound, there's no nation-wide social credit SCORE system in China. Right now blacklists run by the Supreme Court and other government organs make up the bulk of the social credit system. Our team of journalists have been closely monitoring and reporting on-the-ground reality of the system, and what we've found so far isn't quite "Black Mirror" yet.
There are 13million in China social credit system. That's around 1% of the population. On the other hand, the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.
Which would you prefer? Be thrown in jail; or be limited some freedoms/privileges?
I'll take limited freedom. Maybe, then, I'll have a simple chance to prove my case. From Wikipedia, 21% of prisoners in the US are unsentenced. That's roughly 400,000 persons.
It's as crazy to think that close to a half million people are sitting behind bar with no sentence and probably no resources to fight back.
Yes, China is bad. But I think it is doing better than the US given the resources it has and the population challenges.
I'd prefer neither, and as a US citizen reserve the right to criticize the totalitarian practices of both my and foreign governments.
Criticizing evil does not implicitly mean you endorse your own localized evil. The rampant systemic and structural racism and classism built into American society is heinous, but all I can realistically do about it from my vantage point of poor 20 something living in rural PA is vote and advocate for politicians I put my trust in to right the wrongs.
>I'll take limited freedom. Maybe, then, I'll have a simple chance to prove my case.
Tell that to the between 1 and 3 million people who are in Chinese concentration camps because of their religion.
>From Wikipedia, 21% of prisoners in the US are unsentenced.
I'm not sure about the number you came up with, but those are people are awaiting trial, and there are constitutional limitations on how long they can be held. There are no such safeguards in China.
> One such company, Lenddo, determines if you're friends on Facebook (FB) with someone who was late paying back a loan to Lenddo. If so, that's bad news for you. It's even worse news if the delinquent friend is someone you frequently interact with.
Fully expect to see this sort of thing incorporated in credit scores barring legislation to restrict it. We've got even less ability as individuals to stop Equifax from doing this sort of stuff than we would versus a government.
But do you deny that felons have the same issue? How many felons do we have today that were punished by non-violent drug crimes, by design as far as I can tell.
As a US citizen, I don't believe that pointing out my own faults is "whataboutism". It is self-criticism. "Whataboutism" is a defense. I am not defending China, what they are doing is awful, and we should work to make sure that the systems that we have in our country don't replicate it whatsoever.
Basically, I am taking "Appeal to Hypocrisy" and flipping it on its head. For the most part, I do not have the ability, power, or vote to alter the course of Chinese politics. However, most people on here have the opportunity to do so in the US.
> How many felons do we have today that were punished by non-violent drug crimes, by design as far as I can tell.
Yes, but the fix for this problem is not to stop allowing people to consider a past felony conviction when determining what sort of business to do with a person. The fix for this problem is to stop criminalizing things that shouldn't be criminalized, like non-violent possession or use of drugs.
>However, most people on here have the opportunity to do so in the US.
Good on you for fighting the good fight, I've abandoned all hope: I'll let our societies figure out where this winding path goes itself and hedge accordingly…
> The social credit score in China is far more invasive and penalizes you for associating yourself with individuals who have low scores.
Social network-influenced credit scores are becoming common internationally, including by US lenders, but do not appear to be used yet by the major credit reporting agencies in the US due to uncertainty over status under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (just a few of many articles):
As a general risk management practice, say, if you are associated with a low score post code, your insurance cost will go up and may affect your credit score. It is as simple as that. If all your friends are criminals, I am sorry that you might be on the watch list as well.
Credit score is worse. When people need to borrow money to lift them above the ground, they are forbidden to have their life changed. If I had a failure business, I don't mind travel on slower trains and take not so comfortable journeys effort to get my business back. But not being able to borrow money is a death penalty worse than banning on 5-star hotels and high-speed rails.
I think it's fair to look inward at similar issues in our society. No it's not the same, but social trust systems and Scarlett letters are big in the USA. They can be very hard to recover from, their pervasiveness, and impact have only grown. You do not want to be on the list of undesirables. Not in the same ballpark though.
If American creditors are materially interested in efficient ways of modelling customers, and so are Chinese creditors, eventually they should converge on technique after having tested and eliminated more superstitious predictors.
Basically, if social network analysis helps creditors, then it will be done unless the state or some external force provides sufficient counter-incentive.
> In order for him to clear his debts, Kong argues, he needs to be able to succeed at his new business – but that is hard to do if prospective partners and customers shun him because of his official status as a “deadbeat.”
This is awful. Totally admit it, they shouldn't do it, etc.
About the same as being a released felon in the United States. We also allow financial information to be pulled for background checks in the United States:
> A check of a candidate’s background may include employment, education, criminal records, credit history, motor vehicle and license record checks.
We already have what is functionally a social credit system in the United States, you'll find the people suffering under it getting harassed by ICE boarding greyhound buses.
Not even remotely similar. China's rating system is government-mandated.
In the US, the credit rating system is a creature of, and controlled by, the market. The US imposes very weak regulation on the credit ratings companies for individuals, and almost none at all on the credit ratings companies for businesses.
You say that, but that makes little difference to the person that can't get a job, rent an apartment, or drive. Background checks are ubiquitous in the USA. This is relatively new, to the point where a recently departed colleague was shocked. He hadn't changed jobs for 15 years... That's not a crazy long time.
In some ways yes, in others no. There is a difference between having the possibility of optionality (you can try something else if you want) and it being completely not optional.
We don't really have the ability to "try something else" when it comes to the credit bureaus, barring becoming a hermit. (Which would work in China's case, too.)
It is a very american thing to say. I mean "it is bad, because it is regulated". Why? I suppose that social credit system of China is abused to make life of political opposition harder, but the article discussed is not about it. It shows case of a failed debtor. And for him it doesn't matter if social credit system is regulated or controlled by the market. What does matter for him is what impact this system has to his life. What opportunities to repaid his debt this social system closes for him?
In some ways US credit system seems worse for me. The only way to get into it is to get a credit. But what if I do not like to pay interest rates? If I'm higly conscious and I can put down my impulses to buy things, to consume for the sake of consumption, to live on pennies while building a capital from scratch? It wouldn't work, because of this system. There are no way to demonstrate your credit reliability and trustworthiness to a system except paying interest rates. At the same time in China a person has non-financial ways to build up her social score. There are a bad sides, of course, like brutal punishments to those, who've hit negative scores, and it completely makes China's system unattractive for me, comparing with the US one.
Seems that China's system is less tolerant for a risky behaviour, while US system just put you on rails of debt and gives you no other way. The latter seems less disgusting for me, but I'm glad that I have not to deal with any. And as outsider for both I really see no big decisive difference between them, they seem for me very similar.
Seems like there is a misunderstanding about the US credit system. Paying interest has 0 impact on your credit score. Plenty of ways to get a credit card without credit history (secured credit cards are typically easiest) and as long as you pay it off before the statement due date (typically 28-60 days after the charge) then you will not be charged any interest while building credit.
> Plenty of ways to get a credit card without credit history (secured credit cards are typically easiest) and as long as you pay it off before the statement due date
How it works? What the reason for a bank to give credit without interest? I just do not believe it. System must have a way to get interest. If system says it charges no interest, it means that interest payments are hidden. Either behind transactions fees, or by fixed costs covering maintanance of credit card, or by some other ways.
> How it works? ... Either behind transactions fees, or by fixed costs covering maintanance of credit card, or by some other ways.
You're correct, US credit card companies do still make a profit on those of us who pay off their balance in full every month and therefore pay no interest.[1]
Visa/MC/Discover/Amex all charge the merchants a percentage (~2%) to process a credit card transaction. I have a cashback card with no annual service fee which pays 1.5% cashback.
Let's say I spend $10,000.00 on this card in 1 year. Visa will collect $200.00 in merchant fees, pay me $150.00 in cashback, and gross profit of $50.00 on my account for 1 year.
Some cards charge an annual service fee which adds to the gross profit.
[1] It's possible there are some people who are a net loss to the card issuers due to gaming the rewards systems, but generally the issuer will make money on someone who pays $0 in interest.
If system says it charges no interest, it means that interest payments are hidden. Either behind transactions fees, or by fixed costs covering maintanance of credit card, or by some other ways.
In a sense you are right -- there is a hidden fee, and it's related to the value that credit cards create for merchants. There are other ways to make money on payments, besides interest. The card company charges the merchant a fee -- perhaps 3.5% -- to process the transaction.
If a customers pays 8.00 USD for a toothbrush with cash, the merchant receives 8.00 USD in cash. If the customer pays with a credit card, the merchant receives 7.72 USD directly in their bank account. They lose 0.28 USD on 8.00 USD. Why do they take this deal?
* Reduced risk of theft and loss. Cash is easy to steal -- it can be stolen by employees, by dedicated robbers, and by passers by.
* Increased likelihood of making a sale. People don't want to carry too much cash, so sometimes they run out; and instead of making an impulse purchase, they just don't make the purchase. Credit makes it much easier for them to make that purchase.
Rumor has had it that there is a social credit system in China, and now this report reveals one part of it, which I believe is also just one small piece in the whole mass surveillance puzzle.
As a Taiwanese, I don't know how the system works, nor can I feel the same as what Chinese citizens under that surveillance feel. However I can certainly say that, there must be an another part of the system that monitors "political activists" against CCP. Let's call this part as X below.
Once you are in the blacklist of X due to reasons like criticizing Chinese government, you loses some rights implicitly, and the worst part is that X applies even if you are not a Chinese citizen. I have two examples here:
1. Taiwanese rights advocate Lee Ming-che held in China
He criticized CCP and then he could not obtain a visa to even Hong Kong. In this documentary, many instances of such censorship are mentioned, and you can see how the atmosphere is under such surveillance.
Not at all defending the system here, but the article exaggerates quite a bit when talking about the trains.
> In China, only those who cannot afford the high-speed train take the slow train.
I have taken a similar train from Shanghai to Shenyang, it was also a bit north of 30 hours. Sure, it was not very clean and as everywhere you may encounter unconventional people but in general it's not at all the deadbeat caravan they paint it out to be.
OP and Inkstone editor here. The slow train certainly isn't a deadbeat caravan, and I don't think the article suggests that. But it is unusual for a businessman to take this train instead of the high-speed options.
Thanks for the reply and for doing an article on this.
Of course most businessmen would almost always take the high-speed option, but that is the case in Europe too. I did meet and talk to a man who owned a factory on the train, though, and I get the impression that middle-class people and students will still take it for trips in their free-time. Not necessarily because they can't afford other options and I think it's just untrue that "only those who cannot afford the high-speed train take the slow train". If that had been a quote by the subject, that is one thing, but here it's stated as fact.
Don't you think there's more to the story than that his associates deduced his laolai status just by which train he came by?
Studies, especially in recent years, have shown that punishment is not an effective way of improving on self-destructive behavior. Usually things like procrastination and substance abuse are irrational symptoms of emotional drain and hopelessness, and punishment exacerbates those problems. There was an HN post about it just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487411. Poverty and debt tend to also protract out from this kind of emotional bankruptcy.
I hold some small hope that despite their lack of empathy, regimes will at least see the practical side of how ineffective this kind of policy is and how much it inevitably will hurt their economy, after trying it out for a while. Hopefully that lesson will be learned while it's still mostly contained to China.
OP and Inkstone editor here. I think you raised a really, really interesting point.
One thing I think many people overlook in China's social credit system is its stated goal – to create a system that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior – and whether this system can really tackle self-destructive behavior you describe, like debt.
And what's going to happen to people who're entering a debt spiral, and are as a result further punished by the system? Does the idea of social credit mean these people are simply abandoned?
> And what's going to happen to people who're entering a debt spiral, and are as a result further punished by the system?
please stop spreading false info. people on that "laolai" list are those who intentionally refuse to pay their debt when they have the resources to do so. as also explicitly mentioned in your own article, they are punished to the extent of being inconvenience to do certain things, e.g. in your described case, they can still ride a train just not the high speed one.
> those who intentionally refuse to pay their debt when they have the resources to do so
Having resources and having resources to spare for paying creditors are two different things. You can't hope to pay off your debt long-term if you don't buy food in the meantime. That's an extreme example, but the same principle applies to clothes for interviews, transportation to business opportunities, and, yes, possibly high-speed rail travel. An individual can't pour every yuan they get into paying off debt, or they'll end up in poverty (or worse) and their debt will have no chance of ever getting paid. Everybody loses in that scenario.
The point is, as demonstrated in the article, high speed train isn’t always a luxury. And the punishment can have the opposite effect of making people to pay their debts.
You are defending those offenders with a passion by completely ignoring the real victims here. When those "laolai" refuse to pay their debts when they have the resources to do so, rather than defending for those "laolai", how about show some decency by thinking about the real life situations of the actual victims who couldn't get their money back from those "laolai" even after court orders?
With 1.4 billion people, surely you can dig up some "opposite effect", but again - how about look at the vast majority of those real victims here? When someone owes you money and the court order says they should pay you back, yet they choose to completely ignore that. It is just shockingly unbelievable that you choose to defend such offenders because they now can't ride high speed rail!
At least in America, the vast majority of the time, creditors are huge companies and debtors are individuals who happened to fall on hard times or make financial decisions that didn't pan out. Therefore it's much, much worse when a debtor is unjustly punished than when a creditor unjustly goes unpaid. It's the difference between completely ruining an individual's life, and removing a meaninglessly small amount of money from the pockets of rich people who will remain rich regardless. Are creditors in China commonly non-rich individuals? Are micro-loans a significant portion of what's being talked about here? I'm asking this as a serious question.
> Are creditors in China commonly non-rich individuals? Are micro-loans a significant portion of what's being talked about here? I'm asking this as a serious question.
From what I saw/met, most of those debts happened between average individuals. That is how the list end up having millions of cases.
I randomly checked a few cases on that list, most of time, the amount of debts are a few thousand USD. It is not some micro-loans for average guys on streets, it is close to one year of their wage.
Also, keep in mind that China has an economy right now that is in many ways precarious, and big parts of that include corruption and debt. That doesn't make this right, but it makes it more understandable and contextual, and may bode better for the rest of the world's countries which aren't in that kind of situation (and for future China).
In China, banks are run by the government, yet there are shit ton of scams that borrows money from the party and never pays it back. In many cases the loan guarantor has no mortgage to payback at all.
In this "social credit" system from Supreme Court, 90% of the victims are worthless loan guarantors involved in some kind of loan scam.
"One creditor said the company was a sham from the beginning, with fabricated expenditure and cooked books."
Looks like the system is working.
If "barred from participation in the securities markets" by the SEC meant flying in coach and no landing slots for private aircraft, it might have more effect.
Along that line, if the US had a similar system, our current president would have been marked a "deadbeat" long before he got the chance to run for office (not saying the system is right, just saying)
i don't think you understand the premises of how one ends up on the bad list.
"owing" money means you borrow from secondary lender, using it to buy risky assets. you essentially played with fire and got burned. lots of cases like this where these "businessmen" loses money and then declared bankruptcy, refusing to pay anyone back.
sounds a lot like wallstreet doesn't it? are you okay with what they did?
Yeah I'm no CCP supporter but sick of the bad takes on this. China has no national credit reporting system and it's very difficult to enforce civil court judgments across city/provincial lines. "Social credit" systems are mainly intended to help with this problem. The person in the article is in trouble for not paying his debts, not political activity or having the wrong friends.
I'm sure the CCP would love to use social credit as another tool of repression, but for now they're having enough trouble getting a normal credit reporting system going.
I'm not sure what to make of your scare quotes, but none of what you wrote, on its face, sounds wrong to me.
1. If a lender lends me money, they're shouldering the risk that I may not repay the loan. That risk should be priced appropriately.
2. Bankruptcy is a valid concept.
3. What Wall Street did was misjudge the risk of their products (whether intentionally or not). Sounds like what the lenders in your example are doing.
But the government is punishing the risk-takers. Not sure that's a good way to promote entrepreneurship or innovation. The bankruptcy alone should serve as the deterrent (and signal to future lenders)
All your points are valid. However you're only looking at it in a way that's familiar to you.
Here's a personal example, my parents bought a condo in China in a new development area, searched around for renovators and found this shop close by that seemed fairly legit. A show room, full staff, decent looking portfolio, sales people looked legit and they had legit looking supply chain relationship as well.
My parents worked out a project scope and plan, estimated the cost, put down 25% for down payment. The shop came in, did a month of work and then disappeared. Job was half done. what happened? They went "bankrupt".
Are the shop owners risk takers? Maybe. Did they really try to start a business? Honestly they probably saw an opportunity where a new development area was coming up and came in for the quick buck. Borrowed some money, set up shop to a decent level and then disappear.
This isn't an isolated case, lots of examples exist. Am I saying this is the case for everyone? No. But its gotten bad enough that the government had to do something about it. Is it my parents fault for not doing more due diligence? Probably. But it's really really tiresome if you had to do this every. single. time. for everything.
As far as I know, (and correct me if I'm wrong), China didn't have a credit score system as developed as what we're used to in the US (i.e. Equifax, TransUnion, etc.)
But what the social credit system represents is a leapfrog over that to something much more invasive and ubiquitous. I don't want to know if my contractor once smoked in a no-smoking area, of if they buy too many video games. But I do want to be able to check their contractor's license and make sure there aren't complaints.
> I don't want to know if my contractor once smoked in a no-smoking area, of if they buy too many video games. But I do want to be able to check their contractor's license and make sure there aren't complaints.
Some of the pilot projects are intended to work more like that. For example, if you wanted to confirm that "Wenzhou Overseas Travel Ltd." is legit, you could check Wenzhou's portal and search for the name. https://wzcredit.gov.cn/creditSearch/getCompanyDetailInfo.ht...
Then you can see some basic information about the company (legal representative Chen Lili, services offered, address, registered capital of 10 million Yuan, founded in 1998...) and then a bunch of information that's supposed to help evaluate their creditworthiness or look them up in other systems. The section for negative information (underlined in orange) is empty. The most recent data is from 2017, though, so who knows whether the system is even updated anymore.
Yeah, and that's fine. Especially for corporations and other fictitious entities. It's the highly personal aspects of this system that disgust me. The personal habits and nickel-and-dime shit that it vacuums up to determine a score.
While not an expert myself, when I have looked deeper into the reporting that makes claims like this, I often find that they're speculating based on one-off statements, not describing an actual extant system. I feel like the US media, even the most respectable publications, don't take appropriate care to separate fact from fiction re: social credit.
Rounding up Uyghurs doesn't require fancy big data at all. Everyone's ethnicity is already recorded on their national ID card, and by now that information can be expected to be digitized and easily searchable. To get a phone number, you need to register with your ID, so the government gets location tracking basically for free.
All of that is a completely different technical effort to the credit blacklist discussed here.
Well, what I'm saying is that I'm not certain that the social credit system is actually an effort to surveil and stratify all people in China. My understanding is that, in its current form, it only targets irresponsible business owners.
The Uighur roundup - that just sounds like standard colonialist violence to me. I don't see how it's specifically a 'big data' issue, nor how it's related to social credit.
Yes. It could become Orwellian, and I do see the issue with what a comprehensive surveillance state could become.
Either way, China faces a very unique situation, but I do see overall improvement in living condition. I don't live there full time but visit often, I'd say the biggest challenge coming up will be dealing with the aging population (and their needs), the shrinking work force, and decrease in consumer confidence. The post-boomer generation did VERY well for themselves but I can't say the same for the millennials and beyond.
China does have bankruptcy laws, but in this case "One creditor said the company was a sham from the beginning, with fabricated expenditure and cooked books." The debtor running with the money is not something you can simply price into the loan risk, which is why financial fraud is usually illegal. Maybe the creditor was lying to avoid the debt being discharged in bankruptcy, maybe he even bribed the judge to get that verdict, but that's not a problem of the blacklist but of the rest of China's judicial system. The inconvenience of being blacklisted is specifically intended to make people pay back money they falsely claim not to have (which is why it targets expensive "luxury" goods).
You may be certain that you understand the list (this one http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/shixin/), but you are mistaken. You probably read an article about the "social credit system" that got the details wrong.
Getting put on the list is a punishment that can be ordered by a court for various infractions, but not buying video games, because (unlike the other three) it is merely frowned upon, but not illegal. Discouraging video games was part of one companies' private implementation of a "social credit system". The list is another "social credit system". Various local governments within China are also running their own pilots.
Those systems are not connected yet. It is expected that eventually the Chinese government will decide on one implementation by selecting parts of the pilot projects, but it isn't clear which parts. Until that happens, buying too many video games isn't going to ban you from taking high-speed rail.
Isn’t this he same as how diversely family planning laws used to be enforced? Every company/locality will come up with their own thing because the central government isn’t as powerful/focused to do something on its own. Which is good or bad depending on how you look at it.
In what way would you boycott China? Refuse to buy or use products made there? How likely do you think this could scale to an impact that would meaningfully impact China's trade?
And as horrible as I think the social credit system is, there's an interesting question, as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)?
This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China. Maybe people can stop traveling to China, but that wouldn't make a difference big enough for the Chinese ruling class to care.
But why restrict this question to China (though this particular article is about China)? Why not Saudi Arabia, for example?
as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours
Because, if this works, other governments will follow, in no time and likely with Chinese government help. They will "learn" from Chinese government's "experience". Even if you didn't care about the plight of Chinese people, you'd surely care about your own countrymen's freedom? Tech surveillance is more dangerous than anything, because it is easier and cheaper to implement and it can scale, compared to any other system.
> This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China.
That is most definitely not the case, almost all of our groceries and soft goods (that supermarkets sell) come from domestic or nearby foreign sources. Perhaps you meant hypermarkets or discount department stores like Walmart?
The US is competing with China not just economically but socially as well. If China succeeds in creating a more 'productive' and 'complacent' population with its policies, expect the US government to do the same.
Remember the US still has the largest surveillance apparatus in the world. All they would need to do to implement a social credit system is to flip a couple of switches.
Those "switches" don't even need to be flipped by the US Government writ large. Boardroom meetings by "private" companies deciding to integrate ever more of the commercial surveillance infrastructure will suffice.
No, I wasn't talking about anything specific. Just the general setup of having a large part of US surveillance performed by commercial entities, combined with the ability of public companies administering critical services to refuse doing business with arbitrary individuals.
For example: see the "unbanked". Rather than fixing the banking system so that basic transactions do not rely on credit, it's easier to create a whole class of people that the industry tells to get lost.
I guess people can be blacklisted. Google, Microsoft, and a bunch of others have blacklists from which they harass people and the banks I guess can refuse to process individual's transactions in their version of an orwellian wet dream but they threaten the company's integrity when they do that many times over.
"O there just been a mistake at the bank" goes to "they are racially profiling me" very quickly. These very same programs target political activists.
Also it doesn't help that there are decentralized alternative popping up everywhere. If monero(crypto coin) ever became mainstream, the world would be a very different place.
That's exactly the same argument people made about apartheid South Africa. And yet nearly everyone would say sanctions and boycotts were appropriate and effective.
China has millions of minorities in detention centers with some highly questionable things happening to those people. If you believe in justice and human rights, it is everyone's business what happens there.
I don’t know. I sometimes manufacture physical products. I could state publically that I won’t. I could also not buy products made in China personally.
In general we ought to try to change things we don’t like. I can’t imagine the people of China like this system do they?
Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government.
Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin. It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.
> It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.
Also see Hitler's popular approval ratings [0] (Godwin's law notwithstanding). In August 1934, roughly 90% of German voters were in favor of the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor into a single Leader-Chancellor in the person of Adolf Hitler. Note that number should be taken with a big grain of salt, since there was tremendous social and political pressure to vote that way -- and a threat of repercussions for voting "no".
In all Bavaria Chancellor Hitler received the largest vote in his favor in the concentration camp at Dachau where 1,554 persons voted "Yes" and only eight "No" and there were only ten spoiled ballots.
> Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government.
For that reason, I think it's important to take such public-opinion data with a grain of salt. You have to wait until people have enough direct contact with the system in question so they can form an informed opinion of it.
Its also illegal in Russia to make negative statements about the government or state. What people say in public about leadership is quasi dictatorships is possibly different than what they think in private.
> "Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin."
As far as I'm aware, that's a bit out of date. It also, I believe, comes from a misconception concerning human nature, namely that popularity is uni-dimensional. Which is to say, Russians who believe Putin is a superb leader in foreign affairs, great at making Russia seem big and scary to the rest of the world, may also think Putin is an ineffectual corrupt thug when it comes to domestic affairs.
When high popularity ratings are attributed to Putin, the surveys ask a wide variety of questions:
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling foreign conflicts?
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling the economy?
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling the drug epidemic?
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling corruption and law enforcement?
Approval for Putin varies GREATLY between questions like that. When it comes time to make a headline, whichever measure is chosen depends on which bolsters the story. If the story is that Putin is highly effective at manipulating his population, then the dimension across which he's the most popular is chosen for the headline. If the story is that Putin's power in Russia is faltering, then a different dimension is picked for the headline.
It's not lying per se, but it's very similar to a form of p-hacking. Picking which result to report and ignoring the others is a trick used often in the media and academia.
See the nice little table at the bottom that breaks out Putin's approval rating on different issues. In 2015, 83% approved of the way he was handling Ukraine. This dropped to 63% by the spring of 2017. And by the spring of 2017, approval for how Putin is handling corruption is already below 49%. From this we can see there are Russians who approve of Putin's treatment of Ukraine who still think Putin is corrupt.
I'd be interested in this, but every Chinese person that I've spoken to (they haven't been back to China in awhile), seems to think it is either just like the American credit system or that the government already knows everything about them and that there's security through obscurity. Is this common?
Not considering politics for a second, I just couldn't imagine the impact of an Equifax like event with that amount of information.
Because the bank wants assurance that you’re not going to go bankrupt or just not pay it back, and reliably paying off your credit card is a proxy for that.
Whereas you taking a high speed train is not a risk, so blocking that is just punishment.
These people do not want to repay their debts, mostly. And they have money, properties they don't declare. It is a solution to solve problems in China, not problems in US.
I was under the impression that the Chinese version included things like religious and political affiliation. Which, assuming true, a lot of people feel like is a clear overstep. Even now we don't look back at the McCarthy era with fond memories.
Also in America your credit score won't affect you from buying things like a plane ticket or even leaving the country. It only affects your line of credit (money borrowed). I'm not convinced the government should be telling you how to spend your money (but that's clearly an opinion).
There's also a lot (A LOT) wrong with the credit system, like the fact that a significant number of Americans (numbers vary from 5% to 25%) have significant errors by one of the 3 major credit agencies. Equifax... I'm not convinced China could do substantially better than us (especially when you add more factors). Even if you reduce that number to 1/1000 (I doubt that good considering other database error levels), that still seems like a big deal if it prevents you from mundane events like taking a train or plane. I wouldn't look at a system that doesn't look good and say "Hey, we should do this, but with more consequences when it fails."
Sorry, but you are not entitled to a house or any loans. This is not "elites shaping the behavior of commoners", this is just common sense. Loaning money to people is an investment and giving money to people who have no history of even paying off a simple credit card bill doesn't make sense.
It's like being 20 years old and creating a new startup then wondering why investors don't want to give you any money so you can hire out staff and build a product.
It's not inherently impossible to get a loan with no credit history, just really difficult to do without something else to inspire confidence.
And frankly, considering how easy it is for any Joe to build a decent credit history from just using credit cards I'd say most lenders are actually doing consumers a favor by lending them such vast amounts of money on such a basic premise. I know if it were my money I'd be way more conservative.
I think the fear come from how hard it would be to dig out of the hole. People make mistakes. Under the American system the mistakes expire after time.
I have not heard of the expiration of offences in this system. This social credit system is new an may evolve with time.
I don’t see how this is functionally different than having your wages garnished by a court order. Deadbeat dads are subject to the same financial scrutiny in the US. I get the feeling now that much of the criticism of this system is just Western media clickbait.
It is fundamentally different in numerous ways. Being in debt in the western world does not mean you are officially prohibited from certain forms of travel, for starters. Another huge difference is that China's system is based on factors other than financial dealings such as anti-government views. It is a much stricter, less fair, more authoritarian system in nearly every aspect. I find your whataboutism to be highly suspicious.
Apologies for breaking the guidelines. I admit the insinuation wasn't entirely appropriate. I regularly encounter obvious pro-China astroturfing on the Internet and I jumped to a premature conclusion/attack in this case.
I appreciate the response. We have to be really cautious about this, because the cost of getting it wrong is so high, both to the community and to anyone who is unfairly accused. If you look at the thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19401961 you'll see an example of this.
If you’re a deadbeat dad and your wages are garnished, you’re blocked from travel because you don’t have any money. And if you spend the money on travel instead of your kids, the Court would know instantly in states where the Court systems plug into your bank accounts. We already do this. The Chinese system just seems more efficient. Obviously this is a horror show in a country without due process, but I have no problem with debtors being denied niceties.
It is an interesting experiment but if it is really a tool for social change then the ability to correct one's score can't really rely entirely on things where the individual has no control.
In the US getting a felony on your record is perhaps the biggest limiter to your future success that you can do. There are so many things stacked against you at that point. In California there is at least a process for getting some felonies expunged, which allows you to get back on to the playing field of life without that weight dragging you down.
The article seems to make the case that the only way the victim could get their status restored was to come up with money somehow to repay debts.
The joke goes - When the rest of the world took Orwell's 1984 as a warning, China used it as a model.
However, that joke really isn't true, because all the countries took it as a model, it's just that China seems to be somewhat proud of that fact, whereas the rest tried to do it covertly.
This Kafkaesque system will be the end result of the constant increased collection of information from governments (and private businesses, which is the same, they're bed-pals, only after a certain size it's the businesses that wear the strap-on) everywhere.
Technology is a multiplier. It can give us some irrelevant goods (basically, access to every article, news, movie, information without effort, in other words, without any real investment from us, or the ability to make some bureaucratic experience faster, while helping add tons of new bureaucratic requisites that weren't there before), but it mostly multiplies control, and thus dystopia.
The bankruptcy system in the western world is far too lenient; it encourages ruthless risk-taking behavior which benefits selfish people at the expense of those who are socially conscientious. This social credit system doesn't seem so bad when you put things into perspective.
If our system punished selfish people more, as a conscientious individual, I would be better off. I don't buy this bullshit that selfish people drive the engines of progress; they don't drive it; they just capture the proceeds of progress.
John D. Rockefeller himself admitted that "He who works all day, has no time to make money".
if you are born poor you miss out on the benefits that allow people to be successful. Take this site for example it encourages people to take risk and start a business. Worst that can happen if most of us fail is that we move in with our parents. If you grew up poor, maybe your parents don't have a place for you to stay if you fail so the ability to start a business is essentially closed to you as you don't have the safety blanket of your middle class colleagues.
To claim that people who declare bankruptcy are selfish is quite a blanket statement and leads me to believe that you have never known poverty. Try being poor or even border line and breaking a leg or having a child get cancer. Try getting laid off for even a few weeks when over 40% of Americans cant even come up with $400 to cover an emergency.
I'm sorry you felt that way. I'm an editor of the website. What pop-up banners did you see? Would love to improve the UX for you and other readers here.
Since you are the editor, can you explain the relationship between SCMP and Inkstone? I noticed that this article was also posted on SCMP (with minor differences, curiously enough), so is Inkstone only a way to experiment with a different website design, or will there eventually be Inkstone-exclusive articles?
Opening up the site, I saw the headline load up, then something asking for notification permissions, then I'm not sure exactly what happened but many elements came on screen at the same time and the browser window became unresponsive (Chrome latest on a Samsung Galaxy S7). A subsequent visit worked out better, so I wonder if you have a problem on the first ever load of your site.
> If he had money to buy an airline ticket, they told the South China Morning Post, he should use it to repay what he owed.
This line of thinking spans cultures and completely ignores the velocity or time value of money. It is extremely counterproductive and doesn't factor in what someone is trying to do.
This punitive approach to all forms of spending and consumption hampers the productivity of nations.
A simplistic analysis like this has no way to distinguish someone shirking their debts, and someone reinvesting in a future business prospect, or just unwinding! All humans want to unwind.
People with lower debt ratios do the same thing. They don't always pay things down, don't always prioritize debts in any particular order. So this privilege shouldn't disappear just because someone is visibly having money challenges or merely known to have a creditor.
You guys do not live in China, you guys cannot understand that in China biggest problem is credit, many people not pay the debt deliberately, many people do not follow the rule. even the reporter herself do not live in China, she live in Hong Kong. I do not know if the social credit system is the right solution, but think more how many people lives in this country, and how law is weak in this country, and how mass the society that is not like western country.
