So- pretty much every communism that’s ever functioned in history had class distinctions- and it’s no surprise the class which is most valued by the people in power has been.... the people in power. So you have a huge wealth disparity between the leadership and the masses. Generally, below the wealth of top leaders are lesser executive government officials, then lower level officials in descending order, with influential private sector citizens laced in between at various levels, followed down to “normal” classes all the way to the bottom. What’s very different about communism though is that you actually have to provide accountability for such things.
In capitalism we can simply say that anyone not doing well somehow failed, and anyone doing way better than everyone else did really well. But in communism that doesn’t work as well. You must justify why one deserves more than another.
So simply put- using a stilted credit system gives “headroom.” See- the majority of citizens will fall in a nominal range anyway. Basic access to all the things more or less already in their lives. If we place an “middle class” at the top of that scale- let’s say... 1,000 that effectively makes the highest rank a non government official or favored private citizen can actually reach to be 1000. On this scale the highest most could likely hope to achieve is maybe- 800?
So you start at 1,000- then they chip you down for all the social media posts and etc. they can get you for. Looking at that list of infractions, not not can we likely say a majority of people have actually committed at least one or two- we can say it wouldnt be hard to stretch the truth to justify as many offenses as we want- or make ones up.
So let’s look at someone in the basement at 600- they can’t take highspeed rail or book plane tickets. They can only get shit jobs etc. go up to 800 and you can do ok-ish. Let’s call this in capitalist speak- “the average retail worker...” that “lower middle class” that likely struggles but does ok. That would make 1,000 a google employee- someone making close to 6 figures or the like. So we can see a proportional jump in quality of life every 200 ish points here right?
So if you reserve the 1200 range for various favored persons like government employees and party hardliners and the like- we can now justify their much more lavish lifestyle over those in the 1,000 range. And that would reserve 1300 for the rushers and most powerful- as the “odd number out” that’s our first non linear increase in quality of life- and would allow us to easily explain why top officials can afford 7 cars and huge homes. If we plunk most of the country towards the lower end scale we can justify why they have so much less- and it becomes “your doing” and not systematic.
There’s no “corruption” or “favoritism” or “abuse of power.” YOU did this to yourself. See? And all the better that we can tie our credit tier to a general income bracket. See- wee know people who can’t get a decent job or preference for government housing will live in certain areas away from economic opportunity. They can’t afford to live closer. And they can’t use things like high speed rail so we’ve effectively banished all but the most diligent.
It also alleviates feelings of earning inequality. It doesn’t matter if you don’t make enough to fly on a plane if you can’t purchase tickets does it? The reason you didn’t get a house stops being because you couldn’t afford it and becomes that you weren’t good enough to live in that area. It shifts the focus on why your life sucks or why someone else has it better from how much you earn to how well you do socially- but the number is somewhat arbitrary and under government control with what I’m anticipating will be no real oversight or transparency. So the most likely reason for the range is that it’s more effective as a system of control and obfuscation.
It’s hard to justify why two people can be at the max of the scale and live very different lives. It’s also hard to justify why two people so numerically close together would lead very different lives. By creating a top heavy scale you leave room to justify the excesses of those at the highest stations.
Marie Lu touches on this concept in her Legend series, and Scott Westerfield explores it in Extras. One interesting thing Westerfield thought up was groups of people purposely getting a low score to rebel against society. Also, every time real life starts to look like the dystopian novels I grew up with, my soul breaks a little.
Did you know you can start a comment without the word “so?”