Social Credit System
= allocating resources based on acknowledged public reputation
See the entry on Resource-based Economics for added context.
Description
Eric Hunting:
"The idea of a social credit system may derive from this resource Internet in the context of how it would deal with the human component of its creation and maintenance. In essence, the idea of a social credit economic system is based on people being allowed more bandwidth of resources relative to the reputation they build in the society as whole, this reputation digitally tracked life-long, and the public opinion of a particular activity they are engaged in. It’s sort of like having a system that Googles your name regularly to see how many people know you on-line and how positive their opinions of you and then assigns you a credit rating based on that on the premise that what you do has a certain greater than average value to the society. I sometimes call this Star Trek Economics because the concept was first presented in the popular culture in the Star Trek TV series.
In Ray Bradbury’s vision of the future we arrive at a moneyless resource-based economy founded on ‘replicator’ use; a replicator being a machine that synthesizes anything it has a computer model for from pure energy and can recycle it back into energy, with some net loss. Thus the global resource budget is simplified to an energy budget. Everyone who lives in the Federation of Planets can use replicators to make whatever they want when they want it -within reason. You can’t have everyone going Imelda Marcos on this and luckily most people won’t because irrational overconsumption is a product of mental illness and the culture will treat it as such. (unlike today where we casually tolerate public displays of insanity by anyone who is rich enough) The system tracks everyone’s replicator use just like Internet service providers track your personal bandwidth use and if it sees that it has become aberrant it raises the WTF flag and a psychiatric ‘counselor’ calls you on your lapel communicator and asks you if you really did need those five thousand Swarovski crystal-studded pokemon figurines. But, in fact, sometimes people have rational reasons for needing more than the usual amount of resources, usually because of a specific project associated with a vocation; the artist who wants to build a large public sculpture, the scientist who wants to build a supercollider, the engineer who want to build a spacecraft, the night club operator who wants to make a new public party venue. This is where ’social credit’ comes into play. In Star Trek, if you have distinguished yourself ‘professionally’ and socially as a member of the Federation or if the community of your professional peers thinks your work is worthy then you get assigned a higher personal energy budget based on the assumption that, by the measure of your reputation, what you do with this is likely to have value to the whole society. You may be assigned this higher budget based on reputation in general or it may be temporary, leant from the budgets of your personal advocates/supporters, or limited to a specific project. Now, this doesn’t preclude you going out into deep uninhabited space and setting up your own infrastructure so you can make all the pokemon figures you want without justifying it to someone else but most people won’t abandon society to do that -which is probably why, in Star Trek, space -like the Earth’s near-wildernesses- tends to be inhabited by a lot of strange people.
A resource based economic system -a resource Internet- is likely to produce a social credit system like this by its own need for altruistic human intervention to build and maintain its infrastructure. This system would just be a mass of software; an on-line trading system that evolved into an expert system. It’s not like HAL9000 or Colossus. It can’t make people do anything by threat of punishment or the like. It relies on people ‘getting it’ and voluntarily following its requests for facilities here or there on the premise that they’re doing good for the society. In reward for this aid, it can assign people a slightly higher resource bandwidth than average. It’s not payment. Everyone who links up to this system will get full access to as much as they could -on average- want with the system seeking to raise the bar as high as possible to keep it above the average of people’s desires for personal comfort yet within the limits of environmental sustainability -which is pretty high when you factor-out all of today’s waste and greed. So this bonus is offered on the assumption that because these people altruistically helped this system they will likely use whatever extra bandwidth for a similarly altruistic purpose. From this would come the notion of digitally tracking reputation and socially beneficial activity as a way of anticipating the demand for the similar activities such people are likely to need such extra resources for in the future and assigning resource credit accordingly. In effect, the system -just like when it was a commodities exchange market- automatically economically speculates on your socially progressive behavior! And so we arrive at a system of social credit economics. This might sound like a kind of communism but there are no political parties or bureaucratic institutions or nation-states here. There’s just this distributed networked machine that scientifically knows the planet Earth extremely well, tries to anticipate and give you everything you ask it for, asks you for help in doing that from time to time, lets you have extra when it knows you’ll do good things with it, and occasionally may alert your neighbors to come and question your goofy behavior. Would this be something open to abuse?
Of course! That’s what culture and community exist to control. It’s not the Internet’s job to anticipate and factor out every possible kind of rudeness, stupidity, or insanity that humans may perpetrate with it. That’s our job. Besides, we still need something to craft SciFi plot devices out of.”
Discussion
Challenging Three Major Arguments in favour of Social Credit Systems
Mark Whitaker:
(this is an excerpt from his upcoming Glomos book)
About Their Presumed “Greater Streamlined Access, Greater Safety, and Greater Morality” as False Public Relations To Dodge Discussion of the Opposite Effects:
'The global technocrats make three major rhetorical claims to try to deflect from the tyranny that they are creating globally in their private monopolized hands.
First, they say they are ‘streamlining access’ by the interoperability of all data as a convenience to people. Access by whom though? They ignore that they are far more interested in a ‘streamlining denial’ of services and inflicting punishment whether tailored to individual people or whole communities and nations, that are more effective when private monopolies dominate all social relationships in denying access regularly. So, if you really want to streamline access permanently, ending all capacities of centralized third-party managerial domination, manipulation, and interference is required. Thus, more decentralized systems and data fragmentation innately streamlines access and maintains access permanently, like the Glomos.
Second, they claim they are making a ‘safer society’ for everyone. Safer for whom though? First, it is only safer for them to escape justice for their crimes by them being able to attack remotely anyone or any group organizing opposition to them by the streamlined denial they have. Second, such centralizations are making a completely unsafe world from data convergence and the unanticipated disasters that come from choosing such tight coupling of all digital subsystems of a nation or the world. Nothing is more insecure and less safe than a centralized database that can break down whole societies faster by the tight coupling of many different systems. Third, the centralization raises more risk and less safety from the innate release of whole centralized national databases on the Internet with tens of millions of records at once, whether in a hack or an unintentional leak from a centralized database. [Burt, Chris. 2025. South Korea gradually brings digital government services back online after fire; Digital IDs back online after second incident in 3 years. BiometricUpdate.com (September 29) https://www.biometricupdate.com/202509/south-korea-gradually-brings-digital-government-services-back-online-after-fire] Plus, nothing is less safe than than the permanent problems that come from revealing a whole country’s personal biometric information. So, if you really want safety, instead of any centralization only data fragmentation and a less tight coupling of systems is required, like the Glomos.
Third, they argue that such centralized surveillance makes a more ‘moral’ society and thus a higher quality of life. Surveillance of whom though? Morality is defined by holding internal ethical precepts that can be shared whether as individuals or by communities instead of defined by external punishments. So, no, mass external punishments are unable to encourage mass internal morality. External punishments just encourage people to be more strategic about their immorality, to hide their behaviors or actual feelings from being observed, and to plot revenge. Plus, external digital surveillance systems only shift the locations of criminal behavior from more visible and surveilled blue collar crime to the less surveilled managers themselves who are encouraged to be more immoral over time by being able to attack anyone who notices their criminal behavior. Thus centralized surveillance breeds crime from the centralized managers themselves that is a far more systemic and dangerously immoral versions of scaled white collar crimes as database crimes that affect far more people. The evidence from more surveillance-based societies like China or North Korea shows that surveillance makes a more immoral culture from the greater immoralities of the central managers themselves in unpunished elite deviance, in their injustice and bias, and in their crony nepotistic deals that are less noticed when they are behind the cameras instead of in front of them. However, general awareness of elites getting away with crimes all the time creates a two-tier culture that makes the wider culture more fragile and prone to violent bottom-up or inter-elite breakdown repeatedly as the whole system is seen as corrupt, illegitimate, rigged, and lacking any morality or stability. If the central managers’ massive uses of violence and threats grow daily, that is the definition of a growing immorality instead of a growing morality that would be associated with less violence and less threatening behavior over time. So, how can any centralized surveillance system of violence ever create a more moral world, then? Centralized surveillance only puts an immoral leadership cadre in charge of repressing all ethical renewal of potentially improvable and deliberative discussions about moral behavior and more moral choices. However, moral behavior is unable to advance in a centralized surveillance arrangement because that arrangement protects the most psychopathic and immoral people, motivated by narcissistic sadism to control and to kill others that disagree with them.
In short, this is equally making a more unsafe world when immoral demons behind the centralized systems feel more bold with their corruptions and immoral behavior. The Epstein files document the result of a centralized surveillance system, so that should remove any faith in the morality and probity of any wealthy global technocratic leaderships anywhere in the world coming out of a mass surveillance system. Trusting surveillance minded centralizers to get to you a more ‘moral’ society is literally a misplaced trust in letting our governments, militaries, companies, and religious institutions be run by one big open network of child sex traffickers and worse behind the surveillance screens, avoiding jail or the death penalty, and walking free only because they have immorally bribed and installed all the judges to look the other way (using their social credit data for blackmail and control)--though for how much longer? Epstein is the ultimate product and result of a centralized surveillance system, and its results are completely immoral instead of moral. Therefore, none of these data convergences and centralized surveillance databases by global technocrats will ever create more access, more safety, or more morality. It will only create less access, more instability, and more sadistic immorality from the people running the systems who are going to be unpunished because they can punish more effectively anyone who is actually moral who is going to bring them to justice. A centralized surveillance will only make a more fragile and easily wrecked world.
If you really want wider access, more stability, and more morality, only data fragmentation permanently and only expansion of regional deliberation across the world permanently will encourage moral communities to develop everywhere. If you really want wider access, more stability, and more morality, you want the Glomos. This will make a safer, more moral, and more streamlined society—streamlined for actual higher quality of life against the evil and unjust demons who would enclose themselves around us and rob us of our quality of life, and who have gotten so powerful now that they become a reckoning for the world that makes their removal the main agenda of our world.'
Directory
Proposed by John Ruehl:
URL = https://savageminds.substack.com/p/which-social-credit-systems-are-developing
China
"China’s government-run SCS is the world’s most advanced, though it is yet to be completely implemented. Instead of isolated blacklists or points systems, it aims to collect and analyze a wide range of data, including finances, social behavior, and government records, to score citizens and implore them to follow state-approved norms.
The concept emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with local pilot programs starting in 2009. Rongcheng became an early test case by 2013, giving around 700,000 residents a baseline score of 1,000. Scores improved through actions like donating blood or volunteering, unlocking advantages like free medical checkups. Meanwhile, deductions were made for offences like tax evasion, which could cut off government benefits (though for many, the impact was minimal).
After Chinese authorities announced a national six-year development program in 2014, dozens of other “demonstration cities” emerged. Local governments often used small companies to help build the infrastructure and tech giants to scale it. In Hebei province, Tencent and WeChat help promote the nickname “Deadbeat Map” for an app that alerts users when someone with unpaid debt is nearby and encourages users to report them. Millions of other Chinese citizens have been blacklisted from flights and high-speed rail, or investing in real estate or other products due to low social credit scores, according to a 2019 Guardian article.
While Chinese companies helped build the state-run SCS, some were entrusted to create their own. Giants like Alibaba and Tencent, whose apps are deeply woven into daily life through e-commerce, media, banking, insurance, transportation, and other services, use reputation profiles to expand their influence over users further.
Alibaba’s Zhima Credit, launched in 2015, scores users on financial history, education and career, social connections, and charitable acts. Higher scores offered deposit-free rental apartments and expedited visas, yet its role shrank after 2018 when the government declined to renew private credit licenses. Tencent started its own social credit feature within its WeChat app in 2018 but suspended it within a day after public backlash, before rolling out another version in 2019.
Chinese public reaction to the individual SCS has been mixed. Criticism grew in several cities where programs penalized minor infractions, like missing dinner reservations. Central authorities called for the enforcement of penalties only through formal legal channels in 2019, and some cities switched to reward-only models.
Despite its image as a centralized system, China’s SCS remains incomplete. The government is wary of empowering private firms too much or provoking public retaliation, and a national rollout planned for 2020 was delayed by the pandemic and infrastructure gaps. Still, draft social credit laws were introduced in 2020 to unify standards, followed by another in 2022. In March 2025, new national guidelines called for fully integrating social credit into economic and social life, reflecting Beijing’s long-term efforts to bring the system fully online."
United States
While China’s government-run SCS is unique, American companies have quietly built a sprawling and mostly unregulated personal scoring counterpart. Less centralized than China’s, it is in some ways more sophisticated, as profit-driven firms have experimented with minimal oversight.
What began in the 1950s as a way to assess creditworthiness has grown into a massive industry tracking and scoring individual citizens’ behavior. Companies collect data from online records and digital footprints to assign scores or create blacklists. Some keep these ratings secret, while others sell or share them. Together, they have created profiling systems that increasingly determine access to jobs, homes, services, and more.
Insurance companies led the way in using non-financial data for risk scoring. Car insurers, for example, regularly purchase speed, braking, and location patterns from automakers to set premiums. Meanwhile, education platforms like EAB’s Navigate generate student risk scores based on dropout likelihood, engagement, and future success, shaping their lives long before graduation.
An investigation by nonprofit publication the Markup found “that the software, Navigate… used by more than 500 schools across the country, was disproportionately labeling Black and other minority students ‘high risk’—a practice experts said ends up pushing Black kids out of math and science into ‘easier’ majors.”
In public settings, tools like Alessa alert casinos when a visitor’s behavior triggers its proprietary “risk score.” Patronscan, the largest ID scanning firm in the US (and active in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand), allows a person to “either be flagged at a particular venue for up to five years, or flagged across the company’s entire network for up to one year,” according to a 2024 article in the Markup. The company faced a 2023 lawsuit for allegedly violating Illinois’s biometric privacy laws, but denied wrongdoing and settled the case in 2024. It also flags high spenders as “VIPs,” prompting venues to offer them preferential treatment.
Data analytics company LexisNexis, meanwhile, builds extensive risk profiles for landlords, employers, and insurers using public records, court filings, and third-party data, with limited avenues for individuals to dispute errors. Trulioo offers global identity and fraud risk assessments, with especially deep coverage in the US due to the expansive datasets and permissive privacy laws in the country.
American citizens have been drawn into the scoring economy as both subjects and participants. Platforms like Uber and Airbnb rely on user ratings to determine who gets rides, accommodation, and work. Yelp and Google reviews offer public feedback, but can also be weaponized by review bombing, which has harmed innocent businesses and creators.
While not as advanced as Chinese government efforts, US government scoring systems include the Automated Targeting System (ATS), used by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, to assign individual risk scores based on travel data, visa status, and airline records.
Additionally, police departments in Chicago and Los Angeles began trialing threat scores for citizens in the early 2010s, incorporating social networks, past police interactions, and location. These scores influenced policing strategies, including the use of force and proactive interventions. Despite officially ending the use of this system in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2019, predictive policing returned under new names and methods in both cities, often with the aid of private companies. The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ PATTERN Risk score, rolled out in 2022, meanwhile, assesses re-offense risk for prisoners.
The US public reaction has grown increasingly wary of more open scoring systems. Backlash to personal ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scores and corporate reputation metrics led to their diminished use. In 2023, Utah’s House Business and Labor Committee approved HB281, a bill to prevent the state from creating or using systems that employ social credit scores to reward or punish citizens.
Though the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 offers some federal protection for financial credit scoring, no comparable safeguards exist for behavioral scoring or digital blacklists. California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) grants basic data access and deletion rights to individuals, but opaque scoring systems have largely sidestepped it, and automated decisions do not need to be explained. The true number of such systems, both commercial and government-run, remains unknown, making them difficult to monitor or challenge."
Europe
Europe has attempted a more substantial regulatory approach to using personal data in scoring systems. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2016, provides a comparatively stronger legal foundation, requiring companies to disclose why personal scores may change, for example. However, enforcement is uneven, and loopholes remain.
Alongside private scoring tools, European governments have introduced their own social credit systems under more benign branding. In Italy, Rome and Bologna launched the smart citizen wallet in 2022, a pilot project rewarding citizens for eco-friendly behavior like recycling or using public transport. In the UK, “loyalty points” schemes in supermarkets monitor spending habits (as well as physical activity) for use in pilot health programs, an initiative introduced during Boris Johnson’s tenure as prime minister.
Social credit systems are more widely accepted in parts of East and Southeast Asia, where stronger state capacity, centralized digital infrastructure, and cultural norms make behavioral tracking less contested. In South Korea, a state-led “Green Credit,” encouraging sustainable living by rewarding eco-friendly actions, has been in place since 2011."
Asia
Private initiatives have also emerged in Asia, notably through super apps that combine multiple services, building consumer profiles to control access and perks. Japan’s all-in-one app Line, widely used for communications, payments, and other utilities, raised eyebrows in 2019 after announcing plans to implement an AI-driven social scoring system to reward and restrict users based on their online and offline behavior. Given Line’s ubiquity, its experiment is a major step toward privately governed social credit structures."
(https://savageminds.substack.com/p/which-social-credit-systems-are-developing)