China, wikibudgeting and judgement

So it has been a while since I updated this site. I basically left to go on a more spiritual journey, learning about what makes us better humans. In that time a lot has happened and my thinking has evolved.

The premise of wikibudgeting is democratic and participatory empowerment when dealing with necessary inequality.

Inequality is necessary because there are always limits.

Striving for equality is a very noble and human pursuit, but the question I was trying to resolve was how do you move forward in the cases where equality is not possible.

Wikidbudgeting was born out of looking at what we produce and how we judge what is the best product.

However, the model that I came to study was about how we judge and reward labour.

Wikibudgeting was based on a peer-to-peer mesh network.

Quite recently, China has indicated that it wishes to roll out a method of judging and rewarding labour that has some superficial similarities to the wikibudgeting model I proposed.

Wikipedia describes the system as follows:

The Social Credit System (Chinese: 社会信用体系; pinyin: shèhuì xìnyòng tǐxì) is a national reputation system being developed by the Chinese government.^[1][2][3] By 2020, it is intended to standardise the assessment of citizens’ and businesses’ economic and social reputation, or ‘credit’.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

As of mid-2018, it is unclear whether the system will be an ‘ecosystem’ of various scores and blacklists run by both government agencies and private companies, or if it will be one unified system. It is also unclear whether there will be a single system-wide social credit score for each citizen and business. By 2018, some restrictions had been placed on citizens, which state-owned media described as the first step toward creating a national social credit system.^{[9][10][11][7][12][13]}

The system is a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.^[14]

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

There are two major differences at this time. The first is that it uses credit ratings rather than actual money, however this is not really a big distinction.

The second difference is that it appears from the Wikipedia article that the system will be based on a network of institutions rather than a network of individuals. The precise configuration of the network has yet to be formulated, and will probably evolve.

Dmytri Kleiner has recently made a big thing about the distinction between mesh networks and star networks. In reality, natural networks are complex mixes of the two with star networks arranged in mesh networks interwoven at different levels.

Whether the Chinese system will include peer-to-peer mesh network components at the individual level, remains an open question.

However the reaction to the Chinese proposals, at least in the Western world, has led me to reconsider the very premise of the wikibudgeting model I initially proposed.

As I said, the initial idea behind wikibudgeting was to provide a means for judging products, however the model that I developed, judged labour, and by extension human beings. Judging human beings is at the core of the Chinese system.

A world without judgement is a world without law, without limits. So judging is a necessary component of life. However, judging is the opposite of striving for equality. Democratising or increasing participation in judgement where judgement is necessary, is a valid way to proceed when judgement can’t be avoided, but finding ways to make it unnecessary is the path towards a spiritual life.

Without wanting to draw attention to one set of spiritual advice over another, simply drawing from that most familiar to us in the West, the Bible says in translation: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you. ” Matthew 7:1-3 KJV

Most interpreters of this passage believe that it is not an absolute command to “not judge”, but a call to “judge rightly”.

Encouraging judging, rather than practicing non-judgement, leads to a greater likelihood of wrong judgement.

The fear in the West with the proposed Chinese system is that it is encouraging judging and thus leading to miscarriages of justice for its citizens.

In fact, a look at the reality of China shows that the highly bureaucratic and mixture of state and capitalist judgementalism that goes on is already very high. The new system simply seeks to make this more subtle.

Whether it will lead to more judgement or less, depends on the nature of the system being developed.

My own evolution has made me question the need for the model I first proposed for judging labour.

From each according to their ability could be transcended as to from each according to their inclination in a world where there are enough resources to provide everyone with the basic necessities of life.

Under such conditions, I have come to favour a system of Universal Basic Income, which removes a fair chunk of the judgement of labour from the system altogether.

To reiterate, judgement is always necessary so long as their are limits, and though the limits themselves can move, they are always present in some form or another.

Optimising judgement, seeking to apply correct judgement, is fundamental to the study of economics.

As the Bible, amongst other sources, indicates, how we ourselves will be judged is the result of the judgements we ourselves make.

Thus judgements should only be made when absolutely necessary.

Whether wikibudgeting of labour is a necessity will depend on the material and spiritual conditions.

Thank you.