By the year 2020, the Chinese government hopes to have a new social ranking system fully implemented.

This is something I've spoken about from a few different angles on past episodes of the show,

but the basic concept is that China is combining their ubiquitous surveillance systems,

their centrally controlled economy, and they're heavily managed and censored internet,

to give a number, a ranking to all 1.4 billion people living in the country.

This number will grow and shrink like a credit score, and it will operate in a similar way to a credit score,

except instead of representing someone's creditworthiness, how good a bet they are, basically,

if you're thinking of loaning them money, this score will take numerous metrics into consideration.

Among those metrics are creditworthiness, how responsible with money they've been in the past,

but also what they shop for at the grocery store, who they hang out with, and what they search for

online. The score is intended to represent how loyal they are as citizens and how, quote-unquote,

good they are as human beings, good in this case being measured by the standards of the authoritarian

Chinese government, which has some very specific

ideological positions on a great number of things, many of which do not always align terribly well

with an individual's priorities or even their well-being. This number, determined by these

numerous metrics, are intended to more or less gamify the act of being a good Chinese citizen,

and there are rewards for attaining a higher score. You might get VIP seating at certain events,

or access to special privileges in social settings and on transportation, and you might get discounts on your rent or your groceries.

Likewise, if you have a low score, you may have to pay more for the same products and services.

You could be banned from using the train or ride-sharing apps or the library,

and you might even be banned from living in certain buildings or neighborhoods or even

leaving the country. This system, which is already partially implemented in small-scale trials

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