Imprisonment percentage is fairly relevant when discussing free nations, but it is absolutely not a measure of freedom by itself. Especially when you consider the monstrous cultural difference between the two countries.
Who needs to imprison people when societal norms and other citizens effectively do the job for you?
Since your credit score decides where you can get housing, how much you pay for things like phone access, can affect which jobs you can get, has been shown to affect personal relationships (https://www.brookings.edu/research/credit-scores-and-committ...)
And some of the most dystopian examples in China's system apply to ours. Like if you get a ticket jaywalking and don't pay, the ticket can go to collections, and your score will go down if it does.
Not saying they're the same, but there are way too many parallels to ignore.
China has combined this with (a) 500MP camera which can clearly identify anyone in a stadium full of people and (b) forcing all citizens to present biometric information when signing up for a phone plan.
US citizens are not that far off from them...
You could sell a lot of people on 500MP cameras to detect people in stadiums "for terrorism", and in fact I'd be surprised if we don't already do something similar
After all, we already saw private citizens scanning faces at events: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/future-en...
And we've actually tried to make prepaid phones require ID (which is the spirit of the biometrics)... no suprise, with the terrorism excuse: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lawmakers-require-id-to-buy-pre...
And does it even matter if there are uncounted companies and agencies having deployed their own CCTV-networks? Traffic counting, toll-roads, security, public transportation, inner city-surveillance, advertisement displays, and sharing that information combined with the SSID/MAC-address/IMEI of your phone via WIFI/GSM/UMTS/LTE/Bluetooth and sharing that information with who knows who for whatever reason and goal?
Watch out for the blimps!
Now playing: [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kE8565_xrc (Tiga & Zyntherius Sunglasses At Night, 3m42s)
However, I think the real difference with most of these is that they're not (as far as I know) state-controlled in the U.S. even if they end up with the same result in some cases. It may seem small because the outcome may be the same but I think it's a very important distinction - I don't love the Equifax and Experian and whoever gives me a credit score but the government should be an impartial adjudicator if there's a conflict between myself and these people about the score - what makes me nervous is when the government has no culpability and not only sets the rules but also enforces them with no recourse. Not to say I don't think that this happens in the U.S., it does all the time, but it's a whole different level compared to China or non-Democratic societies.