A Credit Score for Your Entire Life?

Reputation management or a “social credit system” would be a way to measure trustworthiness and promote the Chinese governments vision of an “ideal” society.

Accelerating the construction of a social credit system is an important basis for comprehensively implementing the scientific development view and building a harmonious Socialist society; it is an important method to perfect the Socialist market economy system, accelerating and innovating social governance, and it has an important significance for strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society, forging a desirable credit environment, raising the overall competitiveness of the country and stimulating the development of society and the progress of civilization.
~ China Copyright and Media

In the United States, our credit score can either make our lives a lot easier, or hell.

The idea of “social credit score” would be a way to measure “trustworthiness” based on an individual's behavior in what they buy, what they say in an email, etc.

Inevitably to create a system like this it would require breaking down society into behavioral cohorts, categorizing humans based on socio-economic demographic.

I will hold off judgement as to whether this is good or bad, but a couple questions to consider:

1. Are you the sum result of your actions? Or, your intentions? Or, a combination?
2. How do emotions and thoughts impact our behaviors? Can a system measure or predict this?
3. What role does the spiritual and cultural play in behavior? Can a system account for this?
4. What about companies that are analyzing your shopping and online behavior to determine and influence your purchase patterns? Where is this already showing up in your life?

Read the whole article here: China Is Building The Mother Of All Reputation Systems To Monitor Citizen Behavior: China’s proposal is like a credit score that could encompass your entire life, from work performance to Internet activity.