Comment by shadowgovt
5 years ago
It's a difference of degree and monopoly on violence.
... and even degree of monopoly on violence. Uber can do quite a bit of damage to a person by choosing to refuse service if someone needs to urgently be somewhere (or away from somewhere). Airbnb is controlling access to safe shelter. If Amazon grocery stores took off, having a bad Amazon account could deny a person access to food.
I don't think it would take more than a handful of gig-economy service corporations unifying under one umbrella of data-sharing for the average American to start experiencing something a bit similar to the Chinese experience of social score. For now, there's no incentive for them to do so.
Well, that's the price of abuse.
If you have an Uber or Airbnb score low enough to get banned from the platform, you're the problem and you'd have a very hard time arguing otherwise once you start revealing the reviews people have left you.
You're probably vomiting in Uber cars every weekend when you get blackout drunk and destroying property on Airbnb.
Maybe other people should know these things about you before they accidentally do business with you. Of course, once I think of actual implementation of such a thing, I only encounter showstoppers and ay, there's the rub. But the goal doesn't seem categorically wrong.
Though I also admit the inability to have a practical implementation that works is a good reason to condemn anything. I'm just radicalized by horrible ex-tenants and like to smile as I ponder the utopia where trashing my place echoes in their lives forever.
What happens if you're a victim of Vomit Fraud?
https://thepointsguy.com/news/uber-vomit-fraud-scam/
And what if Uber is your government-provided method of transportation for health care?
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/uber-healths-non-...
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but what happens when you apply that reasoning to a whole country? "Well, if you stopped being a shitty citizen, you could get the good train tickets." In the average case, Chinese citizens with low social scores actually are antisocial assholes, not dissidents trying to overthrow a corrupt government. So is Chinese social scoring not actually a bad idea?
It's like... If anyone's been to Disney World, they're familiar with what an all-encompassing experience that is. Now imagine Disney World ran 75% of Florida. And could bar you from the premises for violating its rules...
For sure, this is also one of those roads you can't go down in good hands because of how much it could be abused in the wrong hands (so, by any future administration for eternity).
For example, imagine if you couldn't buy plane tickets because you didn't sit through enough critical race theory white-guilty training.
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> Airbnb is controlling access to safe shelter
they can restrict access, but not control it, because Airbnb doesn't have a monopoly on safe shelter.
It depends on circumstances. In some places and times, they really are the only practically-available option.