LAL #046 — New York Moves Toward Social Utility Scores

Law and Legitimacy

This week, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced a new “Key to NYC Pass" program. Listen to the mayor: “This is a miraculous place literally full of wonders. If you’re vaccinated, all that’s going to open up to you. But if you’re unvaccinated, unfortunately you will not be able to participate in many things.” He’s telling you, then, unless you are either registered online as vaccinated or carry proof of vaccination, you cannot dine at an indoor restaurant, use a gym or enter a movie theater. “Your papers, please,” will become the new greeting of hosts and hostesses everywhere. It’s chilling, a prelude to a terrifying future. And because it arrises in the context of a never-ending pandemic, and because it affects only access to seeming luxuries, we will tolerate as a necessary price to pay for safety. As one New Yorker put it: “This is about public health, so if you are entitled to not have the vaccination, and I am entitled to have the vaccination, I am also entitled not to want to be around you because I am taking care of myself and taking care of the community.” Such are the seedlings of something like totalitarianism planted. Are we in a public health emergency requiring extreme measures? If so, what’s the next emergency requiring such measures: gun control, “systemic racism,” or, perhaps, climate change? Let’s just yield liberty to the experts, those folks who know best how we can, and should, live. In China, folks carry identification cards. Some of those cards are equipped with microchips containing massive amounts of data about the bearer’s habits — what they read, where they visit, what they buy, and who they associate with. An algorithm can score people based on what technocrats believe is a desirable social profile. People with higher social utility scores get better and less expensive access to both amenities and necessities. I fear we’re one step closer to that in the United States, although here we won’t call it social utility—we'll call it Wokeness. Scary times ahead, and I am not talking about the pandemic.

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