China's social credit system is highly exaggerated, and not far too different from what already exists in most Western nations. People get fired here for the slightest social mistakes, right? On top of not being able to buy all sorts of things if they don't have enough credit.
As for the first question, it's not a problem for China specifically because their leaders seem competent. But more generally the problem of power transfer in case of poor results probably has lots of different solutions that haven't been tried in the past, especially now that we have more technology available. One interesting thing China does is have lots of surveys about local policies, which seems to me like something easier and more practical to have now that everyone is online.
In any case, that question is not too different of a problem than what to do when the government in a decentralized democracy such as ours has been taken over by all sorts of interests that are not aligned at all with the population's interests.
Decentralized systems like the one we have are very hard to fix incrementally precisely because they're optimized for stability in the face of constant growth, and we've reached a point of no growth, so the stability starts working against it as it makes the necessary changes harder to enact (since it's very decentralized). Like it or not, the most logical solution for this is more centralization of power. And this will likely happen in the coming decades. It's better that it happens willingly than unwillingly.
As for the first question, it's not a problem for China specifically because their leaders seem competent. But more generally the problem of power transfer in case of poor results probably has lots of different solutions that haven't been tried in the past, especially now that we have more technology available. One interesting thing China does is have lots of surveys about local policies, which seems to me like something easier and more practical to have now that everyone is online.
In any case, that question is not too different of a problem than what to do when the government in a decentralized democracy such as ours has been taken over by all sorts of interests that are not aligned at all with the population's interests.
Decentralized systems like the one we have are very hard to fix incrementally precisely because they're optimized for stability in the face of constant growth, and we've reached a point of no growth, so the stability starts working against it as it makes the necessary changes harder to enact (since it's very decentralized). Like it or not, the most logical solution for this is more centralization of power. And this will likely happen in the coming decades. It's better that it happens willingly than unwillingly.