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No Social Credit Score

Ask an American whether they would accept a social credit system and the answer is no, unanimously, across every party. Ask whether they have ever been cut off from something — an account, a platform, a service — with no stated reason and no appeal, and the answers change.

The American version is not called a social credit score. That is the only substantial difference, and it is the reason it needs naming.

What the American version actually is​

Not one government registry. A patchwork of private and quasi-public gatekeepers that between them decide what a person can do:

  • De-banking and payment cut-off — an account closed, with the reason withheld and no route of appeal.
  • Platform and marketplace removal — access to reach people, or to earn, revoked by a rule the person cannot read.
  • Scoring by inference — assessments assembled from data a person never handed over and cannot inspect or correct.
  • Access conditioned on compliance — a service that is effectively mandatory, granted or withheld on terms nobody voted on.

What makes it a social credit system is not the branding. It is the structure: consequences assigned to a person by an unaccountable process, with no due process attached.

Why it is not called that​

Because in China the state runs it under one name and in the United States it is distributed across companies, contractors and regulators, each of which can honestly say it operates no such thing. The person on the receiving end experiences the same outcome either way — and has fewer places to appeal, not more, because no single body admits to owning the decision.

Distribution is not a safeguard. It is a defence against being named.

The worked example: vehicles​

The clearest current case, because it is physical and it is documented as a named problem:

  • Vehicle surveillance — a car that continuously reports where it has been, to parties the owner did not choose.
  • Remote shutdown — capability to disable a vehicle from outside it.
  • Older vehicles forced off the road — regulation that removes the option of driving something that cannot do either of the above.

Put those three together and you have a permission to travel that can be revoked. The files are in Problems.

Removing it​

  • 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.
  • No inferred score without inspection. A person can see, and correct, what is held about them.
  • No essential access revoked by unpublished rule.

These become bill text through Fixing the Law, and the statutes that currently make this costless are catalogued in Problem Laws.

Our own karma score is a different thing, and here is the difference​

This site keeps a Karma score for citizens, so the distinction gets stated rather than dodged:

  • 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.
  • It is published with its derivation, so you can check the arithmetic on yourself.

A score you opt into, that only adds, and that can be walked 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.

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Where to go next​

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