Social Media, Universal Basic Income, and Cashless Society: How China’s Social Credit System Is Coming To America

Brandon Turbeville
The Organic Prepper
March 15, 2019

A minority of informed Americans may be aware of China’s horrifying “Social Credit System” that was recently unveiled as a method of eradicating any dissent in the totalitarian state. Essentially freezing out anyone who does not conform to the state’s version of the ideal citizen, the SCS is perhaps the most frightening control system being rolled out today. That is, until you consider what is coming next.

Unbeknownst to most people, there appears to be a real attempt to create a system in which all citizens are rationed their “wages” digitally each month in place of a paycheck or ability to gain or lose money. This system would see any form of dissent resulting in the cut off of those credits and the ability to work, eat, or even exist in society. It would not only be the end of dissent but of any semblance of real individuality.

Here’s how the Social Credit System operates in China.

First, however, for those who are unaware of the Social Credit System as it operates in China, we should briefly describe just what has taken place there. The Social Credit System in China isn’t merely a punishment for criticizing the state as is the case in most totalitarian regimes, the SCS can bring the hammer down for even the slightest infraction such as smoking in a non-smoking zone.

One summary of the SCS can be found in Business Insider’s article by Alexandra Ma entitled “China has started ranking citizens with a creepy 'social credit' system — here's what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you,” where Ma writes,

The Chinese state is setting up a vast ranking system that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population, and rank them all based on their "social credit." 

The "social credit system," first announced in 2014, aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful," according to a government document. 

The program is due to be fully operational nationwide by 2020, but is being piloted for millions of people across the country already. The scheme will be mandatory. 

At the moment the system is piecemeal — some are run by city councils, others are scored by private tech platforms which hold personal data. 

Like private credit scores, a person's social score can move up and down depending on their behavior. The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.

The article points out that violating the “social code,” can result in being banned from flying, using the train, using the internet, decent schooling, getting a job, staying in hotels, and having your pet taken away. China is also taking advantage of the mob mentality by branding violators as “bad citizens.” Almost everyone one of these “punishments” have already taken place in China as of the writing of this article and the country has announced its plans to have the system fully in place and functioning by 2020.

The most frightening part? That system is coming here. Soon.

While most Americans have scarcely noticed their descent into a police state, they are quick to dismiss the idea that such a system could be implemented in the land they still perceive to be free. However, all the moving parts are in place in the United States. They only need to come together to form the Social Credit System here.

And they are coming together.

Social media is one important method of judging “social scores.” This is mainly because of the willful posting of social media users on virtually every aspect of their lives. This data is extremely useful to governments who monitor and store the information acquired freely by users who give away the most personal and intimate details of their lives and do so without charge. Whether it is political opinions, pictures of yourself and your food, or private conversations over messenger, that data is being sent directly to the corporation and respective governments then have access to that data via a variety of means and they put that data to good use.

But despite the fact that social media acts as a giant web, snatching users information and acting as a useful tool of NGOs and governments in engineering social movements and human behavior, major social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter have become ubiquitous and as common and are nearly essential communication tools for the 21st Century much as telephones were for the 20th.

The Social Credit System goes along with the dark side of social media.
This is also despite the fact that social media has been proven to make its users depressed, angry, and less social. Much like any other drug, however, social media is addictive, causing real world loss of quality of life while the user simply cannot tear himself away even when he knows it is best for him to do so. For that reason, it appears social media, whatever platform it may take, is here to stay. It’s also an important part of the structure of the coming technological control grid.

But beyond the negative effects social media has on the mind of the individual or in the creation of top down social movements, the “internet mob mentality” has now become a fact of American life. Any celebrity, business owner, or just a regular person can be subject to digital flashmobbing simply as a result of a 2 second picture ( see the MAGA hat kids or the Chipotle girl, for instance) where a person’s reputation is destroyed, their job/business is lost, or their career is over as a result of virtue signaling and “outrage” by masses of people on the internet who are simply following what they believe the rest of the herd is doing. We are in the age of digital lynchings. It doesn’t matter whether the victim was truly wrong. What matters is that he/she is punished as harshly as possible.

The Social Credit System goes along with the move to a cashless society.
And then we must address the coming cashless society. Indeed, we already live in a world that is replacing cash with digital currency. In some cases, the move to become cashless is made by social engineering and predatory marketing to convenience. In others, such as India, the cashless society has been brought forward by law.

As I have written in many articles in the past, cashless programs are almost always first introduced under the guise of convenience. Then, as more and more people take the bait, the older methods of payment are seen as cumbersome and, eventually, are phased out completely. Mandates then replace what was once a personal choice.

Yet, what is so ironic about these programs is that, while the program is touted as providing so much more convenience, even when putting privacy and Cashless Society issues aside and, with the program running at its optimum, they aren’t often really much more convenient. But that doesn’t stop the rollouts and it certainly doesn’t stop the mandates. It’s as if people believe that masses of scientists, corporations, and DARPA are putting their noses to the grindstone for their convenience and not some other purpose. Do we really believe that those organizations have, as their top priority, our health, freedom, convenience, or happiness? Do we really believe this or do we just not think about it at all?

Regardless, with the disappearance of cash also goes the ability to live outside the mandates of the State which has always been the goal of moving toward a cashless system. The United States is rapidly approaching the phase out of cash as a means of exchange. Don’t believe it? Just go to your local convenience store with a $100 dollar bill.

Enter the Universal Basic Income scheme.
Enter the Universal Basic Income scheme. The UBI has been tossed around as a legitimate solution to poverty and violation of workers’ rights for some time. It’s an old idea and even establishment philosophers/activists like Bertrand Russell espoused it in the early 20th Century. But while economists debate the idea’s success in regards to those two issues, no one seems to notice how the UBI, taken in concert with cashless society and social media addiction, will coalesce to produce just the world mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Without getting into the details of why a UBI is a bad idea in terms of society and economics, it is still useful to point out that the building blocks of the technological control grid are already in place and, with a UBI, those building blocks form a rather solid foundation.

Here’s how the Social Credit System is already being used in America.
With the ubiquitous presence of social media and the current culture of social media outrage, the social credit scheme is already in place. The State only needs to implement a coherent strategy that is no doubt itself already in place and merely waiting to be rolled out. Already, employers are able to check prospective employees’ credit scores on a condition of hiring and many require social media passwords for the same reason. The SCS is right around the corner.

Pair the SCS with the UBI, however, and you can easily see how the SCS can be the litmus test for whether or not you receive your “benefits.” This means that, in the very near future, we will see someone who dares say something politically incorrect, making a bad financial decision, or drinking before 10am, literally frozen out of society.

If the government (or some private corporation) is in charge of doling out your “benefits” and the government/corporation is in charge of rating your social credit, what do we think is going to happen to violators? Already, governments are cutting social safety net payments to individuals who do not meet what those governments deem to be “acceptable” healthcare decisions. Similar schemes are in place where recipients are drug tested as part of the requirement for receiving “benefits.”

This is how society progresses into totalitarianism, by the way.
This is how society progresses into totalitarianism, by the way. There are no doubt a great many readers of this article who were horrified at the society described within it but who reached the paragraph above, justifying the methods currently used against “welfare families.” The truth is that those readers were just another step in bringing this system about. Now a younger generation is being used for the same purposes, manipulated by social engineers and reinforced by the generation before them, of bringing in the technological control grid, one giant leap at a time.

Of course, many people who read dire predictions such as these may be tempted to laugh at the idea that such a system could be implemented in the United States, one thing is for sure – the Chinese aren’t laughing. And we shouldn’t be either.

See also:

Alan Watt (Dec 2, 2018) The System shows Symptoms of Decay and Decline - CuttingThroughTheMatrix.com 

Alan Watt (Dec 11, 2016) Our Thoughts are Light, Trapped in Prisms, Nudged & Prompted by Algorithms - CuttingThroughTheMatrix.com

Black Mirror - Nosedive

Brandon Turbeville writes for TheOrganicPrepper.com and his own website, BrandonTurbeville.comHe is the author of ten books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. His books can be found in the bookstore at BrandonTurbeville.comand on Amazon.

Turbeville has published over 1500 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, civil liberties and, most notably, geopolitics and the Syrian crisis. His most recent release is a book of poetry, “Dance, Amputee.”