On Incentivizing Political Informers

Back in the 1950s, in communist Czechoslovakia, my wife's babička (grandmother) was standing in line at the butchers. The news of the day, splashed over the front pages of newspapers like Rudé Právo (The Red Truth) was that the glorious centrally-planned industrialization program had managed to lower the prices of locomotives.

After slowly inching forward in the line, a person from the shop came out and said, "Sorry, no sense waiting in line. We're out of meat." Her grandmother in a moment of unguarded snarkiness muttered, "Well, at least the prices of locomotives have gone down."

Fast forward 50 years, and her mother came to find out that someone in the line had heard the comment and reported it to the secret police, the StB, Státní Bezpečnost. The following note made its way into her permanent file: Mrs. X was noted disparaging the socialist system of meat production and distribution.

Ponder that for a moment. The communists in Czechoslovakia had set up real incentives by which citizens could boost their political standing - their social credit score - by ratting out their fellow citizens who dared to even make a comical remark at the expense of the communists.

Already, we are seeing signs of this social credit scoring spreading in America with the growing ubiquitousness of Cancel Culture, social media mining, malicious doxxing, etc. Were seeing it spread precisely because their are no real disincentives for doing so. The Left, leveraging its allies in government, media, and industry, has furtively captured the moral high ground by its alternative and heterodox vision of what is right and what isn't. And, this trend will continue to grow until ordinary Americans push back by asserting the values of liberty that our forebears bequeathed upon us.