- Criminal records / record of conduct
- Tracking by various advertising companies, market research, etc.
- Whatever records NSA, FBI etc. keep on you. This doesn't even have to be a file-per-person, but they have your metadata, and if you stick out, you might come under closer scrutinty.
The difference is that these sources are not pulled together. Also as a sibling post noted, there is no feedback to the citizens. I don't know whether I have a bad or a good score with the police. I hope I have a good score :-). But if you want to consciously change citizens behavior, you'd have to tell them their scores. (Well, what we do right now changes citizens behavior by scaring them, but thats a different issue.)
One thing I find curious is that there is apparently no sensitivity among the inventors of this scheme towards how dystopian it sounds like. That's why you can have big posters in China saying things like "Friends! Be virtuous and vigilant!" or a Hong Kong official saying something in earnest like "if the brain is sick, it must be washed" with regards to school textbooks. There are PSAs and government posters in the US, too, and people try to push their agendas in school curriculums there, too... but for one they would not go quite as far in the US, and especially such manipulation is attempted much more tastefully.
> That's why you can have big posters in China saying things like "Friends! Be virtuous and vigilant!"
I'm not sure what you want to imply, but i just got back from London where each and every public transport facility (bus, tube, train) kept repeating over the PA that "any suspicious people or parcels" should be reported to a member of staff. Or something like that.
We're not really that different -- i would be surprised if the US is.
This goes much further into social behavior, and takes advantage of consumer and social data in new ways:
"If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well."
Also, while it starts with financial responsibility, the ambitions are larger:
"The intentions of the new system are not only economical, fighting fraudulent practices, but also moral. 'This is a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to promote among its citizens "socialist core values" such as patriotism, respecting the elderly, working hard and avoiding extravagant consumption', says Creemers."
The difference being that credit ratings are used to evaluate how creditworthy you are by looking at tangible data that is (mostly) directly related to your use of credit and actually predictive of your credit worthiness.
This system gives the government the power to codify and even gamify what it means to be a good citizen. It's attempting to shape the way people think and behave in an extremely invasive way.
But wouldn't that be the natural evolution of a credit rating?
A CR is a single metric to evaluate trustworthiness. I can easily imagine a future where credit rating takes into account all of your quantifiable life qualities.
