Based on the article, it appears that the blacklists are used to punish instances where someone was ordered to pay a fine but didn't comply. I think in pretty much any western country, that would result in a prison sentence in itself, but apparently not in China. So those limitations that are put on blacklisted persons are essentially a half-prison: not complete restriction of movement, but enough to serve as punishment. From that viewpoint, it might actually be cheaper to enforce than a prison sentence. It certainly seems to be preferable to the Chinese authorities who came up with the system.

Whoa there. Not paying a fine in a western country doesn’t necessarily (and doesn’t often) lead to jail time. Civil penalties are not easily converted into criminal ones, for obvious reasons (they punish poorer offenders for not being rich).

I'm most familiar with the situation in Germany [1] where you either have to pay your fines, prove that you can't pay (in which case the fine is deferred or split into smaller installments) or get detained in prison for up to six weeks (or three months for multiple fines).

Of course most people do end up complying in one way or another (which means that the fine is eventually paid, even if very poor people might need many small installments).

I'm pretty sure that most other countries will also eventually threaten to imprison someone if they make no effort to pay a fine, otherwise many people would simply ignore them and never pay.

[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_owig/englisch_ow...

No, that definitely isn’t true in the USA. I didn’t realize Germany was so backwards.

They will seize your assets, garnish your wages, but they won’t send you to jail, how would you even pay then?

It's exactly the same in US

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/09/384968360...

For the sake of argument: US universities argue the importance of personality scores. Couldn't social credit be interpreted in the same way? Maybe society stands to gain if more reputable and trustworthy people get the top education spots?

That argument doesn't work for banning the children of people with debts though.

I would expect most people who argue against the social credit system to also argue against those personality scores.