Patterico's Pontifications

11/24/2018

Bejing: Government To Judge Individual Behavior In New Reward and Punishment System

Filed under: General — Dana @ 3:45 pm



[guest post by Dana]

During this Thanksgiving season, most of us take a moment to give thanks for the gracious plenty that is ours. Whether in our personal lives or our country at large, there remain innumerable blessings that enrich our existence here. I would guess that for most readers here, at the top of the list is the freedom to express ourselves with very few limitations. Also treasured, and perhaps overlooked, is our freedom of movement. Traveling by automobile throughout our nation does not require a presentation of identification, nor does it require us to notify any governmental agency of our comings and goings. The freedom to worship how we choose, where we choose, and to whom we choose is right up there as well. And, to varying degrees, we still have opportunities in life to choose the path we want to walk, the profession we hope to become a part of, and the person we will commit our lives to. There are exceptions, of course. This broad-brush painting is not intended to ignore the consequences of having been found guilty of a crime, nor does it ignore the twists and turns, and trial and tribulation that befall us all, in one shape or another. Nor does it ignore the limitations, or even re-mapping of our path that might later become necessary because of circumstances beyond our control. Our lives, even at their finest moments, are messy. But it’s our mess, for better or worse. And if it’s a mess from our making, we can clean it up, or remain stuck in it as we please. And while there are consequences to our every decisions, for the most part, they remain free of governmental interference, whether the choices made were moral or immoral, just or unjust, fair or unfair. In other words, we remain free to make a complete and utter mess of our lives, without retaliation from the government. Of course, family, friends, and employers are a different story… (Please note the exceptions already mentioned. Also included in these exceptions would be the historical governmental mistreatment of American Indians, the internment and detainment of Japanese-Americans and other groups of Americans during WWI and WWII, as well as the mistreatment of groups considered less than equal. And I do not ignore the fact that virtually all levels of government are inclined to infringe upon our rights and interfere in our lives.)

But, in stark contrast, it appears that the authoritarian regime in China continues apace with grossly oppressive and dystopian-like plans for their people:

China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each resident.

According to the report, this will be a punishment and reward system based on an individual’s actions and reputation:

The capital city will pool data from several departments to reward and punish some 22 million citizens based on their actions and reputations by the end of 2020, according to a plan posted on the Beijing municipal government’s website on Monday. Those with better so-called social credit will get “green channel” benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult.

The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be “unable to move even a single step,” according to the government’s plan. Xinhua reported on the proposal Tuesday, while the report posted on the municipal government’s website is dated July 18.

China has long experimented with systems that grade its citizens, rewarding good behavior with streamlined services while punishing bad actions with restrictions and penalties. Critics say such moves are fraught with risks and could lead to systems that reduce humans to little more than a report card.

Chillingly:

The final version of China’s national social credit system remains uncertain. But as rules forcing social networks and internet providers to remove anonymity get increasingly enforced and facial recognition systems become more popular with policing bodies, authorities are likely to find everyone from internet dissenters to train-fare skippers easier to catch — and punish — than ever before.

Not even Winnie the Pooh is safe from China’s crackdown.

Coincidentally, in reading about the subject, I saw that Bill Kristol is advocating that the U.S. should be in the business of changing the government in China:

“Shouldn’t an important U.S. foreign policy goal of the next couple of decades be regime change in China?” The question implies that I think the right answer is Yes.

I’ll put my position simply. The case for regime change shouldn’t really be controversial. The U.S. at its best has always stood for the proposition that all people everywhere deserve to be free.

Now it goes without saying there are practical limits to what we can and should do to make this happen. Much of what we do is simply to serve as an example. We use diplomacy, public and private, to persuade other nations to move toward freedom. We help civil society abroad.

We sometimes use political or economic pressure. We rarely use and should rarely use military force. And of course we realize that in the real world prudence requires that we be allied with oppressive regimes, sometimes terrible regimes (the Soviet Union), and sometimes for a long time (Saudi Arabia). But surely our ultimate goal, after preserving and securing our and freedom, is to be a force for freedom in the world. And this means changing un-free regimes to free ones, or freer ones. This means regime change, sometimes gradual, sometimes, in the way the world works, sudden. I do think a relatively open embrace of freedom as our goal, and a relatively candid debate over means, would serve the nation well. Such a debate will resolve very few of the particular choices facing us.

Those choices will always depend on the weighing of particular circumstances. This will often be difficult and controversial. But having the goal in mind would, I think, clarify and elevate our view. It would be a north star to help guide our reactions to diverse circumstances. We can always recall “the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God,” or by the dictates of History or Science.

The people of China deserve to be free. The people of Saudi Arabia deserve to be free. This means, ultimately, regime change. How to help different peoples achieve freedom is a complicated question. The conditions of freedom and the paths to freedom are challenging.

Freedom isn’t our only goal. But it is our key political goal. And it is the goal of freedom not just for us but for all people everywhere, the goal of freedom with its noble simplicity and even quiet grandeur, that gives meaning and elevation to the American experiment.

Request: Let’s try to elevate the level of discourse to something more than than “Bill Kristol is a neocon!”

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

76 Responses to “Bejing: Government To Judge Individual Behavior In New Reward and Punishment System”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (023079)

  2. Doubleplus ungood.

    Dave (1bb933)

  3. this is the problem when you have an actual maoist running the country, he hasn’t started vaporizing people but give him time,

    narciso (d1f714)

  4. It is very Oriental, and nothing new to them. The Manchu government made them shave their foreheads and grow ponytails under penalty of death. “Shave the forehead or lose the head.” People were executed by crucifixion for belonging to a non-approved religions; now they are imprisoned, tortured and exiled. Japan was largely the same until after WWII. Individual freedom and human rights are Western concepts.

    nk (dbc370)

  5. Which is why we should not have repealed the anti-Chinese Acts or admitted Hawaii into the Union.

    nk (dbc370)

  6. They’re taking this wei tu fah…

    Colonel Haiku (697687)

  7. They need a hero… Sum Yung Gai must step forward.

    Colonel Haiku (697687)

  8. It’s the new Minister of Internal Security: Hu Don Wong.

    nk (dbc370)

  9. and we can’t forget the taiping rebellion, of the mid 19th century, that had a lot to do with the uk’s success in conquering the outer provinces,

    narciso (d1f714)

  10. 80 million dead last time, makes that joke less amusing,

    narciso (d1f714)

  11. this is the problem when you have an actual maoist running the country…

    Xi is more about Confucianism than communism, but his national social credit system sounds more like fascism than anything, or perhaps Orwellian.
    One thing we can do is not sell or give them the technology that would make this authoritarianism become real.

    Paul Montagu (70fe18)

  12. well that horse left the barn a long time ago, about 20 years in fact,

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1049414/Jeremy-Corbyn-news-Labour-Party-security-veteran-latest-update

    narciso (d1f714)

  13. Unsurprisingly, Kristol sees our need to remake China’s government as a moral imperative. When has that worked in recent years?

    Dana (023079)

  14. It’s the spineless application of the Kevin Williamson imperative, and would be like what happened to the UK in the Great War.

    urbanleftbehind (111d3a)

  15. Mr. Kristol knows nothing about the Chinese people is my opinion. The main, maybe the only, reason the Chinese people tolerate and even love their post-1949 government is because it pulled China’s face from under the foreign boot-heel and lifted it out of the mud, and made China a proud, independent nation again. Nothing will unite them more in support of the “regime” than perceived foreign interference. Nothing!

    nk (dbc370)

  16. Well you could say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment, we have seem what a fustercluck a junior robespierre has inflicted on the people.

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  17. I’ll want Mr. Kristol riding the first bomb we drop on Beijing. Like Slim Pickens. Cowboy hat optional.

    nk (dbc370)

  18. Yet he’s not in favor of the trade sanctions, but he wants us to confront a million man army.

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  19. So this ‘modern’ Chinese government is a lot like every other Chinese government in history.

    *yawn*

    If we conquored them and ruled for at least four centuries, we MIGHT be able to affect a shift. Might.

    C. S. P. Schofield (d61c66)

  20. No different than the social justice left does in America. Look at the way they hound people out of a job due to politically incorrect views.

    NJRob (c5cd75)

  21. Pretty much, there was ‘the little tail’ and ‘ acts of repudiation’

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  22. When has that worked in recent years?

    Crimea?

    Dave (1bb933)

  23. 18, 19 and 21… yes, yes and Hell yes.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  24. You know I admired the neocons till they lost the plot, the senior pod seems to have the gust of things, but he’s kept a low profile.

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  25. R.I.P. film director Nicolas Roeg

    R.I.P. magician/actor Ricky Jay

    Icy (e1b2f3)

  26. I knew about the first but not the second, he was the Murdoch marques tech genius in tomorrow never dies

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  27. China’s Internet censorship is an overt and honest version of the covert and dishonest Internet censorship we already have. I guaran-damn-tee you the censors at Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the like have a “Social Health” metric, as well as an “Advertising Friendly” metric and “Proximity to Unacceptable Individuals(Republicans)” metric, any of which can be used to ban you immediately because most of those companies make next to no money from their users and lots of money from government and businesses who quietly mine them for social intelligence.

    Bill Kristol’s advice is always bad and anyone should feel bad for going to him instead of literally anyone else other than the architects of the Iraq debacle and now THE RESISTANCE:

    https://theintercept.com/2017/07/17/with-new-d-c-policy-group-dems-continue-to-rehabilitate-and-unify-with-bush-era-neocons/

    Essence Thief (3ceea3)

  28. Does the intercept have any other columnists willing to call in death threats, ironically their moneybags is now funding kristols ventures small world.

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  29. W.r.t #28, 2nd para…About Damn Time!

    urbanleftbehind (111d3a)

  30. The only one from that times magazine photoshoot who remained sane was Laura Ingraham, brock Kristol all lost their minds.

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  31. I read this book by Mr. Jay. Rest in peace.

    felipe (023cc9)

  32. Wapo should recommend that GA Dems count there blessings in that regard…8 to 11 % is normal and actually low considering the choking off of Gwinett County from black succession by my peeps.

    urbanleftbehind (111d3a)

  33. Well its surprising considering the loss of newt and Tom prices district.

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  34. I guess there can be a turnaround there, not much sanity in your neck of the woods though

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  35. Gotta get out before Abbott Labs realizes, tired of it all and decamps…then that will complete the Connecticutization of Lake County IL and I’ll be stuck with south suburban Cook size property tax rates

    urbanleftbehind (111d3a)

  36. We had a close call last month, in four years well who knows

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  37. Well that depends on how much of the felon vote is AB, PEN1, Outlaws or whatever southeast deviants there are of white affinity groups such as those. Given the frequency of Florida man rages, it probably represents 1 for every 2 black felins.

    urbanleftbehind (111d3a)

  38. Meanwhile NBC news is still protecting brenda snipes

    Narciso (ab2c32)

  39. Why do Americans have to get involved in other countries culture? We have a screwed up mess at home and people think we can fix other countries problems. Priceless.

    mg (ebf6c2)

  40. OT: Congrats to the Irish for being the first team to make the College Football Playoff.

    NJRob (4d595c)

  41. Watch as the single payer system we go to will adopt a scale for access to procedures and medicines. Your diet will be monitored. Eat “healthy” for maximum access. Exercise will be monitored. Don’t exercise? Back of the line for you. And so on and so forth.

    Credit/bank access? Same deal. Working? Are you insured? Savings? Spending habits? And on and on.

    This, and far more, is all coming. AI will determine human worth. Everywhere.

    Ed from SFV (6d42fa)

  42. And on and on.

    Watch that carbon footprint!

    Dave (1bb933)

  43. The US should criminalize the cooperation of US persons and corporations in this process. If possible, we should get the rest of the Western countries to sign on, but like anti-bribery laws, we have to do it regardless.

    Once we’ve done that, we should apply the laws here to companies that are using such social rating metrics to marginalize Americans. They will ironically cry “freedom of speech”, but it’s not THEIR speech they are moderating.

    Kevin M (a57144)

  44. Watch that carbon footprint!

    Mind your pronouns.

    Kevin M (a57144)

  45. We also need to wean US companies off of Chinese manufacturing.

    Kevin M (a57144)

  46. Desperately seeking relevance: ‘The Bill Kristol Show.’

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  47. Shoot me when this bull crap happens

    mg (ebf6c2)

  48. Trey Gowdy used to be “up here” and Lindsay Graham “down there”. …what the hey?

    urbanleftbehind (111d3a)

  49. No one has ever did time with gowdy on the job. But with the racist Cummings taking over, Ivanka is screwed.. great times ahead for all democrats, rinos and no trumpers.

    mg (ebf6c2)

  50. Yes he was basically a joker in the deck, did he abandon ship to soon to have a replacement.

    narciso (d1f714)

  51. Just read climate change is going to cause 20,000 suicides in 2050.
    Global warming or global cooling? Hurry up and jump.

    mg (ebf6c2)

  52. It’s a fairy tale, like that of the mutant star goat

    Narciso (aefb6a)

  53. I was hoping for a liberal cleansing

    mg (ebf6c2)

  54. China’s Internet censorship is an overt and honest version of the covert and dishonest Internet censorship we already have.

    Except China’s censorship is backed by police/military power.

    Paul Montagu (70fe18)

  55. 56… truth be told, doesn’t every aspect of what impacts Chinese society have that backing?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  56. That which impacts their society is ultimately enforced by the police and military.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  57. Except China’s censorship is backed by police/military power.

    And in America by the power of Amazon Web Services and Google. Those two alone have the power to effectively remove any site from the Internet, or by threat, control them. See Gab, for an example.

    Kevin M (a57144)

  58. If the private companies that control the infrastructure of the Internet — and there aren’t that many — decide to censor, the 1st Amendment becomes meaningless. It’s like Ma Bell turning off people’s telephone access if they didn’t like what was being said over “their” wires. There was a law that prevented that then, and we need a “First Amendment Enforcement Act” now.

    Yes, I know there are some who think that, well, if you don’t like Twitter’s censorship, start a competitor, but there are severe costs to enter the market and there are incumbents who can prevent you from doing so no matter how much money you have. If you do something Bezos hates, AWS spank. Further, if you try to compete with a Google tentacle, you have to get some services from other Google tentacles which can be denied because reasons.

    An antitrust case can be made against Google’s many companies, and probably against Amazon and AWS. There is too much concentrated power in the Internet backbone and that is exactly what anti-trust was built for.

    Kevin M (a57144)

  59. That was the ‘black list’ that lefties complain about.

    Narciso (7d6b16)

  60. A private corporate compact following the guidelines, of red channels.

    narciso (d1f714)

  61. caravan migrants now storming wall at san yasidro. women with children rushing past cars at border crossing some women and children trying to climp fence children falling back to cement floor.

    az jay (e6680a)

  62. “And in America by the power of Amazon Web Services and Google. Those two alone have the power to effectively remove any site from the Internet, or by threat, control them. See Gab, for an example.”

    What’s your suggestion when, after breaking up Amazon, none of the sub-companies want to do business with Nazi Twitter?

    Davethulhu (519d49)

  63. Ship sailed with House majority. Thank you, President Trump!

    nk (dbc370)

  64. ‘That’s not who we are’ as Ryan kept reminding us.

    Narciso (7d6b16)

  65. Traveling by automobile throughout our nation does not require a presentation of identification,

    But now (since about 1996) travelling by airplane does, among the cnsequenes of which is that somebody cannot use somebody else’s ticket.

    By long distance train also, but not by bus.

    nor does it require us to notify any governmental agency of our comings and goings.

    Not long ago, ICE got Motel 6 (in Arizona at least) to turn over identifying information about travelers and some were questioned.

    They were sued in a class action by some organization, and the proposed settlement was that anyone whose information was turned over gets $50; those who were questioned get more (at least $1,000); and those placed into deportation proceedings get even more (at least $7,500)

    In terms of money, $7.6 million would go to assorted plaintiffs across the country, and $1.3 million is for legal fees by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and also to pay for the administration of the settlement.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/06/motel-agrees-pay-up-million-settle-claim-it-helped-ice-target-latino-guests

    https://www.maldef.org/assets/pdf/Proposed_Settlement_Agreement-Stamped_1105018.pdf

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  66. The freedom to worship how we choose, where we choose, and to whom we choose is right up there as well.

    This is true, and it is more than the minimum requirements of your religion.

    China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior

    Credit rating agencies do some of that, but the real problem here is WHAT is considered no good by the government of China.

    Of course, they are not really interetsed in train fare skippers.

    The people of China deserve to be free. The people of Saudi Arabia deserve to be free. This means, ultimately, regime change.

    Of course you have to watch out for bad replacements (The Czar by the Bolsheviks, Imperial Germany (after less than 15 years) by the Nazis, and the Japanese in China by Mao Tse Tung’s Communist Party, or, for that matter, the Shah of Iran by Khomeini, but it should be possible to do this, if you only pay attention.

    And unsuccessful revolutions like that in Syria, and to some extent in Libya are also bad. These bad results were mostly caused by foreign intervention by dictatorships that did not want teh prexedent. That applies also to the war in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein where Bush and Rumsfekd assumed for a few years that resistance could only diminish with time. That was bad intelligence.

    Sometimes there is no danger as with the Kurds in Iran in 1991 (because nobody was intervening) so when such an oipportunity arises it should be taken advantage of. The early 1990s was a very good time.

    The unsuccessful Hungarian Revolution in 1956 at least did not lead to something much worse than had been there before.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  67. Freedom of worship is not freedom of religion, the former is proscribed

    Narciso (7d6b16)

  68. “This, and far more, is all coming. AI will determine human worth. Everywhere.”

    No such luck. The managers and technocrats who control the ‘machine intelligence’ algorithms will be making the final decision on how the AI measures ‘human worth’.

    “Yes, I know there are some who think that, well, if you don’t like Twitter’s censorship, start a competitor, but there are severe costs to enter the market and there are incumbents who can prevent you from doing so no matter how much money you have. If you do something Bezos hates, AWS spank. Further, if you try to compete with a Google tentacle, you have to get some services from other Google tentacles which can be denied because reasons.”

    Worth mentioning also is that Amazon is much more likely to make its money and its margins by covertly selling the intel it has on its customers to the highest bidder, government or business. Choosing New York and Virginia as its new homes is just the final step in adding government intelligence to its reams and reams of consumer intelligence (you didn’t think it wouldn’t take all the sales data it had from the products sold on the marketplace to guide its third world cut-rate Chinese knock-off manufacturers, did you?)

    Amazon ‘cuts out the middleman’ by being the mega-middleman for everybody, nobody can compete with their rates unless they sell a heck of a lot more than just logistics and Amazon already has the fringe benefits.

    Essence Thief (3ceea3)

  69. The post reminded me of a Black Mirror episode, but this article claims that the analogy I came up with (apparently already thought of by many) misses the point.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  70. 73. There are two things you can take to the bank when it comes to dealing with the Chinese:

    A) Communists lie. It was true in Soviet Russia (and is still largely true in the Putin government today)

    and

    B) In China, party uber alles. The Commies are interested in what helps the Commies — as a group. It’s a sick form of esprit de corps.

    Gryph (08c844)

  71. Also the seth McFarlane vehicle,

    Narciso (d1f714)

  72. In China, unlike Saudi Arabia, it’s even secret what is censored. When they censsr too much the people in charge of monitoring don’t know themselves – therefore some hints about June 4, 1989 slipped through in ads.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)


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