@JB70,
Where are you coming up with this nonsense from? Perhaps you'd like to explain how a voluntary rewards system ends up being mandatory and totalitarian?
Rewards systems:
- have been run for decades by business
- have been run for decades by City Councils - paying your rates early is an example.
- are voluntary, with no way to make them mandatory (in the above example, they can't make you pay your rates early)
And the other side of the articles coin:
- 'virtuous behaviour' in relation to the Bolognese rewards system was used only by the author - not the system itself. It was used to create false comparision and fear in conspiracy theorists
- this rewards system was erroneously compared to a Chinese punishment system of your conspiracy theory article. It was written that way to induce fear in conspiracy theorists
- aligning a single city with 'Italy' and 'Europe' was both hyperbole, and paranoid. It has no basis in fact. It was written this way to induce fear in conspiracy theorists.
And makes the assumption :
- that a City Council has any interest in tracking your purchases
- that a City Council has the technical capability, time, and funds to create an AI program to track your purchases
- (and in the event they did have AI to do such) that your purchases made under this scheme (likely be around 1/500th of your purchases) would have any viable meaning to an entity interested in tracking
Ie. the article has no basis in fact, and deliberately misleads in order to instil fear.
In comparison, if you'd been talking about mega corporation tracking your internet use being used by government, or the issues with facial recognition, you would have something.