False dichotomy. Both of these things suck.
China institutionalized what USA prefers to make private.
Silly proletarian, that’s not even the credit score they use for home loans
But China is authoritarian.
I’m not comparing the systems or saying it’s better, but you don’t need a credit rating to get a mortgage on a home in the US and are doing yourself a disservice repeating that talking point.
If you don’t have a credit rating they’ll ask for other evidences you are able to pay off a 15-30 year loan like consistent and not missing payments on a phone, rent, utilities, internet, etc steady employment, bigger down payment. it’s called manual underwriting or a non traditional mortgage application.
Man, what world you live in?
If you treat your credit card like your debit card, you can get 3% off literally everything. As long as you don’t spend more than you make, you’ll never owe interest.
I have enough credit, I can by a whole car with the swipe of a card. I’ll never have to wonder about underwriting or proving myself. I’ve already done so to my bank. And if I ever decide to do that, I’ll have zero down and zero interest for 6 months.
Have fun with the interest rate you’ll get. You’ll inherently be a higher risk than someone with a good credit score.
Not to mention that western countries are the ones going towards 1984 with thier fucking age verification
China, under the murderous CCP and PLA (76+ million murdered), is authoritarian. Ask the folks in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong SAR, and Manchuria how they feel about the Han Chinese ruining their day. Taiwan is holding out with very good reasons. As for the USA, Krasnov said, Xi is great and we love each other.
I don’t care what other countries do to a degree where we need to intervene their governance with military or covert actions, I don’t understand their culture, their history, their people, their way of thinking to force democracy across the world. I only care about protecting our country, our people and leaving the world the fuck alone. I feel like that’s how most of the world works.
Both are bad???
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Sure, let’s say it doesn’t since I admittedly haven’t looked into this in painful detail. However, this meme seems to suggest that if it did exist, then it would be perfectly fine on the virtue that credit scores exist in America. Aka, whataboutism.
Since Germany made concentration camps under the third reich that it isn’t that bad when America does it. At least by this logic. Guess it’s impossible to be against two things at once. Though I hope I’m just misinterpreting the point
The meme is pointing out hypocrisy among those in America. Its common to hear them mock China for having a social credit score system, while apparently not realizing they have exactly that with credit monitoring companies.
This is all made more ridiculous by the fact that there is no social credit score in China as Americans understand it.
The joke is that Americans brag and call everyone else barbarians, when they themselves are the barbarians. Its pure projection to inflate the massive American ego.
That’s not what “whataboutism” is. This isn’t a structured debate where we are limited to one topic, it’s a conversation… and we’re allowed to use examples and compare like to like, you do it, I do it, every human on Earth does it every day.
Sure, you’re allowed to call this and everything else ‘whataboutism’, I don’t think you should be given a “whataboutism score” wherein those with the highest scores are avoided by reasonable people.
I await your charge of gaslighting eagerly
Start editing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit_system
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They didn’t even read the first section of the article they linked.
There have been widespread misconceptions in media reports that China operates a unitary social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low or rewards if the score is high.
Exactly my thoughts. People just mass downvote into oblivion, no reasoning provided.
Reasoning has been provided all over this thread, including by users from instances you cannot see because Lemmy.world censored them from your view.
Where do you get your news from? Not going to continue to argue, but I’m just curious
No one place, I see the same mainstream western news as everyone, I just also read articles from outside the west as well, and non-mainstream sources too.
Yeah, I just wonder which sources are “from outside the west” since I’m trying my best to break my echo chamber
CGTN is pretty mainstream for news from China, they have English news. The Cradle is typically decent on reporting from the Middle East. For western and glonal news from a communist angle, BreakThrough News and Geopolitical Economy Report are both good.
China’s social credit score system exists because after their rapid urbanization the business community started complaining that they needed a way to know who can be trusted to pay back loans. At the same time the cities were full of people who were used to knowing all their neighbors and were now surrounded by strangers that they didn’t trust. The Chinese government framed both of these problems as the same thing - a crisis of trust - and presented the social credit score as the solution. It was just a copy of the United States’ credit score system but dressed up in socialist buzzwords to make it more palatable to the people, so it was really just meant to solve the first problem while pretending to solve the latter. The “social” aspects of the social credit score (subtracting points when someone commits a crime, public disturbance, etc.) are inconsistently applied across various localities and practically vestigial, most Chinese are not even aware that they exist. It’s ironic that this socialist coat of paint on one of the most capitalistic elements in the Chinese economy makes Americans think it’s dystopian, while in reality the most dystopian parts of it are the ways that it’s identical to our credit system.
Just orientalist vibes, no sources in sight.
Why don’t you correct me instead of marking my comment as bigotry and removing it? I said that China’s social credit system is just an ordinary credit system much like ours, and that is bigotry how, exactly? Explain it to me.
It’s wild, you don’t even have to say anything bad about China to piss you off, you just have to talk about it neutrally without constantly praising it as a socialist utopia.
Here’s some sources, some even from far-right US journals that have looked into it. It has more to do with regulating businesses and execs found to be in violation anti-trust laws.
It’s really just standard anti-trust legislation, IE things the US used to do before 1980s when they let finance capital take over.
- The US’s credit score system is vastly more influential and detrimental to a majority of its population than China’s social credit system, which largely doesn’t even exist, and where it does exist it is only used to target businesses.
- China’s Social Credit System is more about regulating businesses, and execs who are found to be in violation of anti-trust laws.
If you’re going to mischaracterize it in the future, at least post some sources.
That is pretty wild. I didn’t know any of this … I just thought “communist dystopia is dystopian”. The fact that you can take a hit to the credit score for engaging in protests and demonstrations is still scary … no one show this to Republicans.
The fact that you can take a hit to the credit score for engaging in protests and demonstrations is still scary
I was saying that this sort of thing actually doesn’t really happen. The social credit score for the most part is just an ordinary credit score and is only meaningfully affected by finances. Some localities made an attempt at implementing the “social” aspects of the system and subtract small amounts for certain criminal offenses, but it barely makes a difference.
Engaging in protests and demonstrations gets you the same thing it gets you here; tear gas, pepper balls, beatings, and possibly prison time & a criminal record. The hysteria around the social credit system is very silly when the actual dystopian shit is so glaringly obvious, and occurs in both China and the US.
Engaging in protests and demonstrations gets you the same thing it gets you here; tear gas, pepper balls, beatings, and possibly prison time & a criminal record.
Not entirely false, but the scale & severity is much worse in the US, and they’re ramping up for more.
I cannot emphasize enough how much air would be sucked out of our propaganda overnight if china just fucking uncensored the internet and truly protected freedom of speech and information.
I mean judging by how cooked the brains of so many western people are with internet conspiracies like qanon, I’m not sure that would be the result of deregulation
The PRC would be incredibly naive to let US tech companies in, and take and hoover over their social media landscape, like so many other countries have done. For example India’s most popular communications platform, is facebook. The US effectively controls the social media of a country many times larger than itself, and can influence it whatever way it wants, as well as spy on every person who uses it.
For those who want to view US-run tech sites in the PRC, they can of course via VPNs which are completely legal, but that friction is very worthwhile for encouraging home-run alternatives, and preventing mass surveillance by an evil empire.
The Chinese credit system is western propaganda there is nothing like it as described in western media.
Lmao Chinese can’t even move to the other cities of their own country.
In a world where credit is allocated on the basis of trust, all credit is social credit
Not an American or a liberal, and yes, china is authoritarian. Is america better? No. The credit score system in the US is also bad.
Authoritarian is a meaningless pejorative.
The social credit score isn’t real.
Re: authoritarianism— your opinion.
Some of us aren’t in favour of oppressive regimes that aren’t transparent, surveil, and censor.
I am a Chinese minority living in China. You really don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to China. You very clearly have done 0 research beyond maybe reading RFA. You should be quiet until you have done some proper research.
You can’t possibly be a minority in China, what with all those intact organs.
Ad hominem, ad hominem, and mmm, ad hominem. Yeah, nothing to see here.
Not an adhominem. You’re not wrong because you’re stupid you just happen to be both wrong and stupid.
Well in the comment I said that you didn’t explain why I was wrong and simply resorted to making a string of ad hominems.
So I’ll reiterate: ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem.
Saying you should shut up if you haven’t researched a topic isn’t an adhominem.
Least insufferable redditer
It isn’t an ad hominem fallacy to point out that doing little research on a topic and repeating easily disproven talking points isn’t a sound basis of argument.
And I have, and my responses were given little in return from them.
You have not, considering everything you’ve said has been easily debunked, and when encountering hard numbers you reflect to dogmatism.
Still better then the baby eating pedo elite
It is possible to oppose all three things. It is possible to simultaneously oppose the Social Credit System in China, the Credit Score system in the United States, and the elites connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
Is it? You need to think more pragmatically, you are a laborer. Your only bargaining chip is your labour, decide who gets it. Personally, I don’t want to be part of any helping them live their best life.
I am curious, who is “them” in your statement and how does opposing all three of those things inherently cause me to give up my bargaining power?
No don’t, you never will. You’ll always contribute what ever system you’re a part of. Just choose one and the chienese might do a lot of bad things but they aren’t the pedofile baby eating elites.
The social credit system that you know of doesn’t exist.
Interesting phrasing. A phrasing that assumes assumptions on my part. So … what social credit system DOES exist.
“Authoritarianism” is meaningless because all it means is “uses state power.” It doesn’t acknowledge which class controls the state and who it uses state power against. In China, the working classes control the state, and use state power against bad actors and capitalists more than anything else. China is oppressive to capitalists and liberating to workers.
China is a capitalist dynasty my guy. What is liberating about 5 year olds making shoes in a factory?
China is a socialist country, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. Child labor is illegal in China, you may be thinking of the US.
I’m using the term to refer to suppression of people (which isn’t restricted to workers) in politics, media, etc.
Except by “the people” you seem to mean capitalists and fascists, not the broad majority of society that are uplifted and support the system.
I haven’t much evidence for the claim: “In China, the working classses control the state”
sure you will say that is my western bias from living with china bad propaganda, but you could actually provide something to me read on topic if possible
Sure!
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
The working classes in socialist countries are the ones dictating the state and its direction.
You can debate whether the system works well, but it isn’t accurate to say there’s no evidence for the claim that the working classes play a central role in the Chinese state.
China’s constitution explicitly defines the PRC as a socialist state “led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants,” with state power exercised through the National People’s Congress (NPC) system. The NPC is the highest organ of state power, with nearly 3,000 deputies drawn from provinces, the PLA, and different social sectors.
The makeup of the NPC is not just party bureaucrats or business elites. In the 14th NPC there are hundreds of deputies from workers and farmers and large numbers of grassroots representatives, along with 442 ethnic minority deputies covering all 55 minority groups. Most deputies in China’s people’s congress system (about 95%) serve at the county and township level, which are directly elected and involve hundreds of millions of voters. Higher congresses are elected from these lower levels. This structure is what China calls “whole-process people’s democracy.” Sources explaining the system include CGTN’s Who runs the CPC and the State Council white paper China: Democracy That Works.
You can also look at how the state treats capital. China has private capital, but it is clearly subordinated to state goals. When Jack Ma tried to push an aggressive fintech model through Ant Group that would massively expand lightly regulated consumer credit, regulators halted the IPO and forced restructuring under stricter oversight. That is a case of disciplining capital when it conflicts with social stability and the broader economy.
Likewise, China has pursued policies like eliminating extreme poverty and building massive infrastructure networks (including projects that are not monetarily profitable) because they are treated as long-term public development goals. That kind of large-scale, socially oriented investment is difficult to sustain in systems where private capital dominates the state.
So you can disagree with the Chinese model, but there is actually a large amount of Chinese material explaining how their system is supposed to function and why they claim it represents working-class political power.
Tell that to the Uyghurs…
There is no genocide of Uyghurs. Uyghur genocide atrocity propaganda akin to claiming that there’s “white genocide” in South Africa, Christian genocide in Nigeria, or that Hamas sexually assaulted babies in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of “genocide.” Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens.
The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.
I also recommend reading the UN report and China’s response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.
Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time as well. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn’t going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.
Quote all the bullshit you want Cowbee. The world knows the truth 🙂
Do you have any proof? The OISC disagree with you. And even the UN doesn’t call it a genocide because that’s not what happened.
“the world”
Please explain how what I said is “bullshit,” I even included the UN report. Why do you like Adrian Zenz?
You ain’t wrong about the social credit thing! There was only one municipality that tried to implement it in any way that even vaguely resembles how mainstream media hysterics portray, and that city’s administration was punished for it on the national stage.
The only thing the “social credit” system was meant to do is make major public figures accountable for corruption. It was never aimed at REGULAR people!
But yeah nah fuck anyone and anything that opposed democracy especially the two faced single political party of the United States of America. If they actually gave a shit about democracy for real instead of just consuming lives to pay for their pedophilia addictions, we’d have ranked choice voting by now.
Unfortunately I don’t think ranked choice voting will save you. You need to clear the board so to speak and get some options that actually represent people over corporate interests.
You do realize that ranked choice voting is one of the simplest and least violent ways to push forward progressive candidates right? Because it makes people comfortable with voting options that with first past the post would be throw away votes
Alas, I fear the US might be too far gone for ranked choice to have an effect.
The problem is quality of candidates. Since Citizen’s United opened the door for unlimited corporate money in elections, literally 90% of candidates are on someone’s payroll. “Grassroots” is a thing of the past. Mass media and name recognition are everything.
Haha, you think the epstein class will allow you to vote away their fascism
It’s an important reform no matter what, even if we have to resort to other methods to take out the class first.
That makes sense, and then you look at Europe and realise the issues at hand are systemic, caused by material conditions and bourgeois democratic electoralism is never going to fix those issues.
Much of Europe already uses ranked choice or proportional voting, yet remains austerity-ridden and sliding toward the far right because it is still under the dictatorship of capital. The voting mechanism is secondary to the concrete material conditions: capital’s imperative to accumulate, the commodification of labor, and the state’s role as an instrument of class rule. Until that dictatorship is overthrown, electoral reform is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
The core contradictions at hand are:
Socialized production versus private appropriation:workers collectively create value, but capitalists expropriate the surplus
The tendency of the rate of profit to fall: as organic composition of capital rises, profitability declines, forcing capital to seek new fixes
Overaccumulation and underconsumption: capital produces more than can be profitably sold, leading to crisis, layoffs, and austerity
The contradiction between capital’s global mobility and labor’s relative immobility, which fuels a race to the bottom in wages and protections.
As imperialism declines (neocolonial extraction becomes costlier, interimperialist rivalry intensifies, and the Global South resists outright plunder) capital can no longer rely on external superprofits to offset domestic falling rates of profit. The response is internal repression: austerity to slash social wages, union-busting to weaken labor power, surveillance to preempt dissent, and the normalization of authoritarian governance. This is capital’s logical reaction to crisis.
This dynamic mirrors Weimar Germany: economic crisis, delegitimized liberal parties, and a bourgeoisie that ultimately backed fascism to crush the organized working class and restore “order” for capital. Today’s far-right surge is the same phenomenon: capital’s emergency management when consent can no longer be manufactured through bourgeois democracy alone.
Voting under these conditions is not a path to liberation; it is a ritual that legitimizes the managers of decline. For voting to matter, you must overthrow the dictatorship of capital and reach the synthesis of these contradictions: a revolutionary transformation that socializes production, abolishes exploitation, and builds a state that serves human need, not profit. Only then does political power and thereby voting become meaningful.
Ranked choice and proportional voting are 2 very different concepts. You are falsely pretending they’re similar when they’re wildly different concepts. Only Ireland presently uses it from the eu, because they as well have an establishment, and ranked choice voting is anti establishment at its core.
Why are you trying to pretend they’re the same concept?
How do you expect to have a revolution if 90% of people don’t agree with your viewpoint? And I say that as a socialist. Pushing forward the agenda over the course of decades is more likely to be successful than a single revolution, in my opinion.
Yes, they are different, but the point at the core of my argument is that it’s irrelevant as they serve the same purpose at their core.
Whether it’s s RCV or MMP, the outcome remains austerity, imperialist foreign policy, and rising far-right influence because the state remains an instrument of capital. Ballot mechanics don’t override class power. RCV isn’t “anti-establishment at its core”; it’s a procedural tweak that can just as easily stabilize bourgeois legitimacy.
How do you expect to have a revolution if 90% of people don’t agree with your viewpoint?
In my country the revolution has already happened. We now conduct class struggle through party debate and socialist democracy, not bourgeois elections.
Also revolutionary consciousness isn’t a precondition you wait for, it is forged through struggle. The 90% figure is wrong for a start, even in the US communist sympathys are quickly growing, you also assumes static opinions under static conditions, but material crises radicalize people faster than decades of electoral gradualism. Reformism doesn’t build toward socialism, it manages capitalism more palatably and demobilizes movements by channeling energy into cycles of hope and disappointment.
Pushing forward the agenda over the course of decades is more likely to be successful than a single revolution, in my opinion.
History suggests otherwise. Social democracy produced the welfare state only under the unique pressure of postwar reconstruction and Soviet competition, then dismantled it once those pressures faded (and even that was built off massive exploitation and imperialism in the periphery). Capital concedes reforms only when forced and retracts them the moment profitability demands it. Waiting for electoral consensus while the climate burns, fascism rises, and imperialism massacres isn’t a strategy. Bourgeois democracy won’t let you vote through its own abolition. The task for those still under bourgeois democracy is to build dual power: organs of working-class authority that can confront and replace the dictatorship of capital. That’s how you can make voting matter.
As good as preferential/ranked voting is. Compulsory voting would have a much larger positive impact on US’ democracy
Ideally both
How will compulsive voting improve anything? Now you’re dragging even more uninformed dopes to vote, a lot of them will vote for spite. Far more than you realize, I think
Trump was 100% the vote-for-spite-burn-it-down candidate. That’s how they get you, the old switcheroo
Now you’re dragging even more uninformed dopes to vote, a lot of them will vote for spite.
uninformed defines almost all american voters and the last election showed that 30 million people who voted in 2020, chose not to vote in 2024 instead of spite voting.
That doesn’t happen in reality
Many far right countries (australia, japan, south korea) use ranked choice voting… it doesn’t make a bit of difference. If capitalists control the political system, then they will stack candidates and fund the campaigns that support their interests, and the “democracy” there is nothing but political theatre.
Outside of Marxists, even the ancient greeks knew that representative government is just another name for plutocracy, because only wealthy / landed family have the money and prestige to fund campaigns to get themselves elected. Liberals still haven’t learned this simple lesson.
In what world is Australia far right? Center right/neoliberal today maybe. But not far fight, especially compared to other countries
Also I recommend compulsory voting.
In this world, the world where open support for genocide is bipartisan in Australian politics
I do not and will not dispute that either.
Neither can fix the systemic problems caused by capitalism though, democracy in capitalism is democracy for capitalists.
Well then use that amendment that children keep dying for or stop complaining. So pathetic
I already organize with a communist party, I have no intention of simply complaining alone.
What good is complaining amongst a communist org, if your democracy and elections a rlcapitalist?
Please stop financing and enabling the USA, also, and stop using the US dollar for international trade. So lame that you haven’t done that
I actively steal from the USA
Everybody disliked that
You can dislike it all you want doesn’t make it less true.
Authoritarian is a meaningless pejorative.
Fucking kek
The social credit score isn’t real.
Ultra double fucking kek
Go back to 4chan obergruppenfuhrer. Or provide some evidence/analysis but I doubt you have that capability.
Reminds me of the anime PsychoPass.
