You can qualify the statement down into something that is more true -- "In many countries like the UK the concept of a credit rating is much more limited in scope and can't be boiled down to a single numerical score" -- but then you don't get the clicks
-
Show this thread
-
The fact that OP is protesting in the comments that what she's saying is defensible on a technicality ("the best kind of correct!") but obviously people aren't reading it that way and she still hasn't deleted it is why the Internet sucks and has made us less informed than we were
3 replies 4 retweets 54 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @arthur_affect
Yeah I shouldn't have RTed it but also I think "Americans are exceptional in having credit scores" is a stupid burying of the lede anyway Like the point should be "the number of living humans who are beholden to credit scores is an unlucky minority and you belong to it"
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @Nymphomachy
Enh There are certainly countries in the world where there's a stronger social safety net so the idea of doing a credit pull of a single score to get a job or rent an apartment isn't a thing
2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
But even then it's kind of overstating the case to say that in those countries there's no such thing as good or bad credit -- the previous iteration of this meme said "If you just pay the rent they have to let you live there", which isn't true anywhere
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
France doesn't have a credit rating agency but they still check your income and debt records and you can still get an apartment denied to you if you have too many unpaid bills on your record and have been blacklisted
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
The real innovation American banks started was the idea of making it a number that goes up or down, whereas the previous bureaucratic solution was just a blacklist where you're either on it or off
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
The latter is, probably, a less oppressive system than what the American one has become but at the time the idea was that a score was a more sophisticated and less punitive system than just a black and white "deadbeat or not" system
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Also I would say the real issue is that given the population of the Earth as a whole, having ready access to a credit system at all puts you in a minority of humans, and people in the majority who don't are oppressed by that fact
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
(This is what Kiva and all the other microlending sites are about Although it's less even *credit* than it is the reputation system There's plenty of places in the world where if you show up in a new city and want to rent a place you're just SOL)
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
("I don't know you, I don't trust you, you can't live here", with no bureaucratic requirement that you de able to argue back with any kind of official record Kinship ties and social circles are much more important in such a society for being able to do anything at all)
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect
I guess I'm overthinking this, or underthinking it Like to me the significance is that we're culturally indoctrinated to think of credit scores as a universal, global inevitability when in fact people who have them are outnumbered by people who don't
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Nymphomachy
Well, sure, the dystopian reductio ad absurdum of what we're already doing is the PRC's concept of Social Credit
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.