Social Engineering

In the mid-20th century we had some scary folks out there. We had the Soviet Communists. On the face of it they were really nice people who just wanted everybody to be equal and have an equal share, but the way they went about it was so terrifying that socialists like George Orwell desperately sounded the alarm. In Soviet Russia your friends could report you for a thought-infraction and you could end up in Siberia for the rest of your life. How's that for social engineering? "Go along or die."

Mind you, it wasn't just the Soviets. In response to the "Red Scare," Senator Joseph McCarthy fired up the House Un-American Activities Committee. (It actually started back in 1938.) Blacklists were built and arrests were made and hundreds were imprisoned while thousands lost their jobs. Suspected communists and all sorts of sexual perverts were targeted. If you didn't "think right" (however they defined that), you could be in trouble.

Well, of course, all that is in the past. Soviet Russia is gone. McCarthyism is nothing but a blot on our history. It's over. But that's not entirely true, is it?

Reports are out about China's new invasive social engineering program. They've been incorporating advances in technology to monitor their people and create a social-credit system. It punishes "undesirable behavior" and rewards those who "do the right thing," where "do the right thing" is defined by the State. If you're "good," there can be benefits. If you are not, there will be consequences like restricted travel and poor credit ratings. What constitutes "bad"? Canceling a dinner reservation or jaywalking can cost you. If your best friend's dad says something negative about the government, you could lose points. Seriously.

Thank goodness we don't have anything like that in America. Right? Of course, we don't have anything like it in the American government. Surely not, but we've managed to accomplish it in our current mob rule. We call it "social media," but it often is not very sociable. Like Soviet Russia, if a friend reports you for something regardless of the veracity, you could pay, and you could pay dearly. If you quote someone who is on the "We hate him right now" list, it could go very poorly for you. People are being sanctioned, suspended, even fired for infractions, real or imagined. Sometimes an abject apology might help, but quite often it doesn't matter. Kiss it all goodbye. The Mob has spoken.

The problem, of course, is that governments can be removed. The Soviets came to an end. McCarthyism was brought down. China may not be able to sustain that kind of intrusion. But what do you do when the problem is the masses? They won't be going away anytime soon. You can't vote them out or overthrow them. They have the backing of our basic Constitutional rights behind them all while they intentionally undercut our basic Constitutional rights. They decry judgmentalism and intolerance and hate all while they practice each of those things.

China is trying out facial-recognition toilet paper dispensers in public bathrooms, for pity sake. They plan to track everyone everywhere and repay them for going along or not. Not to be outdone, our current technology encourages us to surrender our privacy and display our hate and bad thinking in order to properly and thoroughly thrash it ... with hate and bad thinking. This does not bode well for us.