SOCIAL CREDIT
How the US Might Implement it Without Making Laws
Background
Since 2014, China has been attempting to impose a social credit system that gives you rewards for “correct” behavior and punishes bad behavior by limiting your freedoms. Without a constitution protecting them, the people are subject to whatever whims the CCP wants to indulge. An example of how much authority the CCP has is the recent complete shutdown of Shanghai under the ridiculous Zero-Covid policy.
But this kind of thing can’t happen here, can it? We have our Constitution, our laws, our freedoms. Or do we?
ESG Ratings for Each of Us[1]
ESG stands for Environment, Social and Governance and includes climate change, social justice and other criteria that until now, have only been imposed arbitrarily on corporations. The pressure exerted has forced companies to at least claim to align with far-left agendas without passing laws. They guilt-trip companies, publishing their “wrongness” on various sites and newspapers, expecting the public to shun those companies listed as bad actors. Standard and Poors now wants to impose these “scores” on states, as well. Those actions didn’t appear to have much impact on us, but they paved the way for the ultimate goal—social credit for us. However, I personally would prefer to choose to live in a state with a low score, simply because I don’t like being controlled.
At the most recent World Economics Forum, Alibaba execs explained how they could track our individual carbon footprint, knowing where and how we travel, with whom and what we eat. Doconomy has partnered with Mastercard to create a credit card that would analyze your purchases for the impact on the environment, cutting you off from credit when you hit a carbon emissions limit. Walletmor has created a hand-chip that allows you to make payments with a swipe of the hand (it could also have the same credit analysis).
As this goes forward, you are likely to see a personal social credit score that could cut off access to loans, affect your interest rate and even might impact your ability to access insurance. Note: this could happen without Congress doing anything within their legitimate power. They simply pressure financial companies to impose these things on customers. The effect on us would be the same.
So far, we haven’t seen this here, but Canadian banks froze the personal assets of protestors in February. Banks have closed accounts of some Trump allies. Banks have refused to process payments to conservative fundraisers. Even Bank of America, a former employer of mine, mined their customer data to find out who had traveled to Washington DC around January 6th, 2021 and who had bought firearms. Biden tried to force banks to reveal any transactions greater than $600.
This isn’t theoretical anymore. Without a public announcement that would come from passing a law, like the Green New Deal, we could find our freedoms curtailed by businesses kowtowing to Washington. Did you know this? Had you any idea of how bad things were getting?
States’ Rights
While the People’s Republic of CA is not going to do this, some states have been working to ban social credit scores. Arizona, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Kansas and Louisiana are trying to protect their citizens. However, the banks are falling in line happily; they may not be able to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, religion or sex, they do seem to want to discriminate on the basis of ESG score.
Powerful people are behind this. Larry Fink, CWO of BlackRock (and an appropriate last name, if I ever heard one), has said, “Behaviors are going to have to change. You have to force behavior and at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors.”
Peoples’ Rights
If you don’t think this could happen, remember how people were told they couldn’t access health care if they didn’t get Covid shots. Tell your banks and other financial institutions that you will find another place to bank if they decide to opt into this. Write to your politicians. Make this a major voting issue and then, vote. Write letters to the editor. The more light we shine on this plot, the harder it will be for them to implement. We have to do something. Our very lives depend on it.
[1] Content from Epoch Times, June 15-21, 2022, Kevin Stocklin’s article
Glen Beck has been talking about this for a long time. I believe publicly traded companies are going to need stockholders to initiate changes of their boards to stop this. It is a serious threat to liberty.