Humans like to make their scores go up, even unimportant scores. To encourage better behavior, society should very carefully create a number of scores that a person can track that positively impact society.
The numbers should only be for positive things.
There should be several independent scores.
Currently, individuals keep score based on net worth, number of cars/houses/lovers, etc.
This is NOT the same as the “social credit score”. There can be no punishment for doing poorly.
Some options to contribute to the brainstorming.
For people:
- Number of people positively impacted.
- Number of cats pet.
- Number of dogs complimented.
- Amount of trash picked up from the streets/parks/beaches/public places.
- Hungry people fed.
For businesses:
- Number of employees succeeding at life (I do not have a tight definition.)
- $ contributed to local public schools.
- Paid volunteer hours of employees to the community.
Pretty sure there’s been more than one sci-fi novel explaining why this isn’t a great idea.
Keeping score for good things generally will lead to those points being abused so people can look good but not actually be good. Suddenly creating ranking for more good. Good vs evil where the lower tier can’t keep up so the actively don’t attempt to be good or even strive the other way.
It could work for businesses, we already have apps that scan labels to give info on the business practices and things like glassdoor for insight into the employee life
Black Mirror Nosedive
It already exists, in places. You’ve probably written a review for private businesses, but how many commendations have you submitted to your transit worker, city service worker or politician?
You can file compliments in the same place you file complaints, via phone, paper form, web form, e-mail or snail-mail. I’m sure these people would be pleasantly surprised to receive your positive feedback.
Commendations are brought to supervisors, and sometimes they even make the agency’s public newsletter. They cost nothing but a bit of time and thoughtfulness to give, so I’d say give it a try.
Yes Corporate Social Responsibility reports, ftw! /s
“There can be no punishment for doing poorly”…
Good people earn points, bad people don’t earn points.
What is the point even? What do the points even mean? Are they worth anything?
If bad people aren’t earning any points, isn’t that already a form of punishment?
So if one pedophile flies another pedophile on a private jet to party with children, did that positively impact the pedophile in question?
Seems hard to track cats pet without a lot of surveillance.
I do think that doing this personally is part of why gratitude journals and similar things work so well though.
I don’t want to side track you. I don’t keep points for anything and would wager that most people don’t either. I think if you just appreciate your accomplishments/achievements it is reward enough. If not then good luck with ever being satisfied.
Why everything needs to be score to begin with?
Maybe be a cultural thing with the USA. Around here (south europe) I don’t feel like people keep track of that things as a score.
Well, letting everyone make their own definitions of “being a good person” does not seem to be working out very well right now… So it might not be the worst idea to at least give feedback when you’re being a piece of shit or positively impacting other people’s lives.
What could go wrong?
It’s not like that’s what have been done by every religion in the world. And they all did a great job making the world a better place to live /s
How about Karma instead?
Man, if karma was real. It would be pretty sick. But it don’t, and the proof is… Points at everything. When the billionaires gonna get theirs?
Hopefully it’s just gaining traction and coming back around
