How we remove it
Three requirements. Each is narrow, each is testable, and each becomes actual legislative language rather than a principle.
1. Due process where consequence lands
If a decision cuts off a person's ability to bank, earn or travel, they get the reason and a real appeal — to somebody who did not make the original decision, on a clock, in writing.
Note what this does not require: it does not require anybody to serve anybody. It requires that when ordinary participation is removed, the removal is explained and reviewable.
2. No inferred score without inspection
A person can see, and correct, what is held about them — including scores assembled by inference from data they never handed over. Inspection without correction is a courtesy; correction is the requirement.
3. No essential access revoked by unpublished rule
If the rule cannot be read, it cannot be complied with, and a rule nobody can comply with is not a rule — it is a discretion. Publication is the minimum condition under which the word "policy" means anything.
Where these become law
As bill text with numbered sections and a repeal list, published in the open and waiting for a sponsor: Fixing the Law and Fix Bills. The statutes that currently make all of this costless are catalogued in Problem Laws.
Our own karma score, and the honest comparison
This site keeps a Karma score for citizens. Rather than dodge the obvious question, here is the difference, stated as four properties:
- It only ever goes up, from things you chose to do and logged yourself. Nothing is inferred about you and nothing is collected behind you.
- It cannot take anything away. No account, no service, no access. There is nothing to be cut off from.
- It is voluntary and leaveable. The product runs fully on your own machine, with no account at all — see Get Started.
- It is published with its derivation, so you can check the arithmetic on yourself.
A score you opt into, that only adds, and that you can walk away from is not the same object as a score assigned to you that can close your bank account.
If ours ever acquired the power to take something away, it would belong on the problem list with the rest — and we would rather write that sentence now, in public, than be asked about it later.