Time for Big Brother

The Economist included a long report in an issue before Christmas, introducing a new Chinese initiative using various data sources to keep score of its citizens. The project has already had a couple of iterations and trials, and seems to be set for a wider implementation.

Citizens can score points by doing deeds perceived as beneficial to society. More often, they will be docked points, for anything from traffic misdemeanours to poor credit or late tax returns or to not visiting elderly relatives enough. Maintaining a good score entitles citizens to better jobs or other rewards.

The author of the piece was clearly horrified by the prospect, and initially so was I. But the more I thought about it the more I liked it. It is also impressive, requiring lots of data and IT connectivity, things that in the past have hampered this sort of holistic initiative – such as the UK NHS attempts to create a national health data system.

It all reeks of Big Brother, the final arrival of Orwell’s dystopia, just thirty years late. And clearly, if the system becomes an arm of autarchy and oppression then it is something to be feared. The Chinese a tinkering with penalties for criticising the state or organising protest. Clearly setting up a system whereby the only model citizen is a compliant one is not something to celebrate.

But this aside is this really something to be feared? Tellingly, the Economist author came up with the old libertarian chestnuts to justify his or her negative attitude. So, caring for parents is a private matter. But should it be? Elderly care costs are a major vulnerability for all societies in the 21st century, so the more responsible families are doing an important civic duty. The negative attitude feels to me to be rather old fashioned and masculine, the same type of thinking that confined women to centuries of unpaid work and lost opportunities.

Then there are the things like not declaring everything for tax or working in cash, portrayed as some sort of civil liberty. Rubbish! We’d all be better off if we all complied with fiscal laws all the time – and it is usually a privilege of the rich to get away with loopholes.

My first exposure to a transparent society was via living in Stockholm in the 1990’s. The Scandinavians were always way ahead of the IT curve, but also had a Lutheran sense of civic responsibility, a sort of collectivism, even close to communism as Marx originally intended it. Key to the system was a personal number and ID card, used for almost everything. In our first weeks in the country, while our requests for numbers were being processed, it was actually quite hard to get things done – as an example any credit card purchase was routinely backed and linked to the number on the ID card.

I came to love the efficiency of the system. It was used for all tax related matters and saved a lot of paperwork and reporting. A by-product was that any citizen could look up the tax details of any other, including their income. That took some getting used to, but in the end I thought – why not? You can imagine what this did for civic responsibility and against corruption.

Another example of the benefits of big citizens data is emerging in India, where a massive national database is revolutionising how benefit and subsidy disbursements are made, eliminating middlemen, waste and most corruption. In general, developing nations have the most to gain. 

A couple of years ago I mused about starting a couple of internet businesses. One of my ideas was a system of reporting courteous or disrespectful driving by text. Any driver could report any other, by typing in the vehicle licensing plate and a few categories. Some firms already do this, with “how is my driving?” stickers on the back of trucks and vans. One flaw was the temptation to text while driving, so I wondered about limiting it to passengers – but nowadays voice-based software could remedy that.

Finance could come from insurance companies or the local police or licensing bureaux. The police, in NYC at least, don’t really have resources for traffic patrols, and the benefits to insurance companies are obvious. Apart from dreams of making money, my motivation was as someone who gets frustrated by reckless or selfish drivers. Almost weekly I witness some crazy road race at double the speed limit – why should these people be free to put the lives of the rest of us at risk?

I shared the idea with some friends. Some were concerned about false positives or vindictive campaigns. But Trip Advisor and the like show this to be a false worry. The software would deal with it – multiple reports would be needed to count as valid, and reporters would also be checked as valid. The more interesting concern came from a German friend, who immediately thought of the Stasi and the historical culture of ratting on your compatriots. It is no surprise that Germany remains the most nervous about this sort of innovation. But I think the benefits outweigh the risks.

So if you fancy making money, take my idea and run with it! Once you’ve made a few million, slip me 1% and I’ll be even happier.

Another futuristic viewpoint came from the excellent Lionel Shriver in her recent novel “The Mandibles”, about a future dystopia in the US. The book is both funny and thought provoking, and somehow seems even less farfetched after the election of 2016. In the endgame, the US divides into two nations. One is bankrupt, almost all resources go to supporting the old, and everyone has an implanted memory chip auto-taxing all income at a high rate while preventing any workarounds. In the other, there is no law except the primitive superiority of power, so everyone carries guns and survives on their wits, tending to preclude support for anyone needy.

The novel brilliantly provides a logical journey to this endgame. In a way, the reader is invited to choose between the two dystopias. I found this a helpful process, because in the end I was happier with the prospect of state control, though obviously ideally not in a bankrupt nation. If I can rely on the state to act with integrity and for the interests of citizens, I would be very happy to sacrifice my ability to cheat, and even happier to lose all the hassle and paperwork. Why would I want to cheat the state anymore than I would want to cheat my family or my neighbours? In the end, that is what cheating involves. The ones who do it most today tend to be wealthy, and they are the ones lobbying against ID cards and automation.

No, I for one am finally ready for Big Brother. Bring it on; its time has come. This sort of innovation can benefit everyone (except cheats), especially in poor countries. Yes, we need safeguards against abuse, and the single party state in China certainly has the potential to abuse its power. But in the end even they require the trust of their citizenry to operate. Beyond sensible safeguards, let us not fall for all this libertarian nonsense – it is often a smokescreen to defend selfish practices of those with privilege.