Life in a social economy
Today in the car with my wife, youngest daughter and niece we watched a vehicle turn into our lane, then drift into oncoming traffic, all without any awareness that we were behind him, because he was on his phone. My wife insisted we honk and scream at this driver. They needed to know how potentially dangerous their aloofness behind the wheel was. I had an impulse to take a picture of the licence plate and somehow report the driver to the police or post it on social media. Maybe then they would learn their lesson.
My impulse was a fairly natural one. I didn’t wish an ill-will toward the driver but my desire for safer roads, particularly for my children, tempted me to attempt to ruin this person’s reputation on the off chance that the lessons would stick. This social justice impulse can be used to modify behaviour in individuals and organizations in a way that bends towards positive outcomes. It can also tap into our most tyrannical tendencies as well.
The Chinese Communist Party has been developing their “social credit score” in order to systematize the behaviour that the collective would prefer. A person might lose points for driving poorly or buying too many video games or posting something incorrect ton social media. The idea being that individuals need a clear reminder of how their behaviour affects others and this will encourage more prosocial acts. One motto used in CCP literature states that, “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful.” What might it hurt to reward those who keep trust and slightly punish those who don’t? It doesn’t take much imagination to project how such a system could lead to totalitarian control. Those in power over the ranking system can dictate what is considered worthy of an increase or decrease. It could easily quash individual liberties and uniqueness.
This type of system is not only implemented in Communist China. The global financial community, encouraged by the United Nations, has implemented an ESG scoring system for corporations. This is a score measured by their standards on environmental, social and governance goals. The idea being that a ranking system like this is necessary to motivate a more caring version of capitalism. A corporation’s ESG score might effect their ability to draw in investors or impress in global markets. A company could post record breaking profits but still look unsustainable in the long term if its ESG score is something left to be desired.
Critics of ESG argue that this is all just politically motivated to force corporations to lean left. Or that the scores are essentially meaningless because of how they are measured. An oil company might have a higher ESG score than Tesla which from an environmental perspective doesn’t make sense. Perhaps ESG is just a way for unelected “global elites” to control behaviour from above. Either way, it is a system that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
Social media lends itself to makeshift social credit systems. The quest for more likes and views leads us to alter our behaviour. The threat of getting “ratio-ed” or “canceled” or being the victim of a “pile-on” keeps us from sharing our authentic thoughts.
Whether or not it’s officially systematized like in Communist China or the ESG, we live our lives with a social credit system of sorts. Our reputation is a valuable resource and we now have the technology to alter the repetitional scores of any one on the planet with more efficiency and potency than every before.
Psychological warfare involves attacking the enemy’s reputation in order to reduce their ability to draw resources, maintain allies, and effect the overall narrative. If one’s enemy has a bad enough reputation they can be mistreated with impunity.
Some people deserve it though right? Like the distracted driver or a serial offender. The weapons of psychological warfare are powerfully useful in helping shape our society the way we see fit and keeping bad actors at bay. One problem though, is that we all deserve it. Cardinal Richelieu says, “give me six lines written by an honest man and I will find something with which to hang him.”
To different degrees we are all susceptible to an online mob. The more we engage online, on social media in particular, the more we expose ourselves to a potential public character attack. Like standing in the streets of Rome. We may see and experience beautiful things but it is only a matter of time before we get mugged.
What happens online doesn’t stay online either. Our virtual identities are now enmeshed with our real lives which leads to real life consequences for online behaviour. People have lost jobs, college enrolment, and even their freedom because of comments made online, sometimes when they were minors. The online life has made it easy for corporations and governments to track and monitor our lives in ways that the 20th century totalitarians could have only dreamed of. It has never been easier to enforce social rules against ‘wrongspeak’ and most of us have voluntarily opted into this system both as enforcers and as potential targets.
What is one to do in the face of a potentially oppressive economic system? Let’s look at those who feel oppressed by capitalism. It is impossible to entirely remove one’s self from capitalism, at least in the western world, but there are concerted efforts one can make to lessen one’s dependency on such a system. One could effectively opt out of a capitalist life by becoming more self sufficient. One does not have to worry as much about price gaugers and war-profiteers if one can be self sustaining. Sharing and recycling as much as possible can help one get needs met without depending on market forces. Internet marxists recommend making your own clothes, stop using soap, and stop driving in order to “buck the system.” You don’t exit the system entirely but you reduce your dependency on it.
In a similar fashion we can escape the social credit economy, particularly online. We can reduce our social media use, maybe even cut it out completely if we’re feeling really ambitious. This can free us up to work on real life relationships and building our face to face reputation. When an opportunity arises to pile on to someone and gossip we can opt out of participating. Chances are we don’t have all the facts anyway.
Opting out of the the social credit game does not come easily but it could be done systemically through social incentives. If we compare it to the financial world, there are those who are obviously of lower economic status, then there are those of lower status but who spend their resources to try and appear higher status than they actually are. When we look at the ultra rich of today they usually don’t wear flashy clothes or drive gaudy vehicles. They are so wealthy that they don’t have to signal their wealth to anyone. They have transcended the game entirely. In the same way that really tall people don’t have to brag about being tall or attractive people don’t need to convince people they are attractive. In fact, the highest status women demonstrate their status not by attracting the most men but by rejecting high status men. Through being choosy they can signal that they are above this silly mating game.
It is in that vein that perhaps we could elevate those who transcend the gossip and toxicity of our makeshift social credit system. What if criticizing people for their mistakes made the criticizer lose status? What if bringing others down actually caused you to be brought down even lower?
The essence of being cool is being able to transcend whatever random popularity games are presented by the masses. Sure your status improves if you win the game but it should be bolstered to a whole other level if you don’t need to game at all. Instead of being fast enough to dodge bullets you can get to the place where you don’t need to dodge bullets at all. Like the Buddha after achieving enlightenment who was able to turn arrows that were shot in his direction into flowers.
We live in a social economy. But we don’t have to opt into it as much as we think.