In the list of national stereotypes, under “Italy” entries on waste separation, obeying traffic rules and worshiping the intact are not particularly prominent.
But that can still happen.
The first European social credit system is being developed in Bologna of all places.
Under the name “Smart Citizen Wallet”, it should allow citizens to collect virtue points by means of an app on their mobile phones from autumn.
Anyone who can prove that they have separated their waste or used public transport and have never been forbidden to park will receive credits.
What they can be exchanged for remains to be seen.
China has been working in test regions with such a system to control the behavior of the population since 2014.
If you behave well, you will have easier access to credit and visas there, while those who make a negative impression must expect travel restrictions and tax increases.
Technologies of optical surveillance are used as well as the evaluation of the amount of data that the smartphone provides when booking and paying with it.
Digital personnel files are growing
If one sticks to the European variant, which for the time being only provides for positive sanctions if participation is voluntary, then it turns public life and its problems into a game.
The Italian group of authors “Ippolita” analyzed this in their book about “Electric Souls” (“Anime elettriche”, 2016).
Moral discount tokens are then distributed, which open up access to goods and consumption levels depending on how many points have been collected.
Society turns into an organization where virtue reckoning is established.
In the ideal case, measuring stations are set up everywhere to determine obedience, and the digital personnel files grow.
It must be determined what is desired and how much can be repaid for making the desired happen.
Deviation, disobedience, indifference, and stubbornness are considered antisocial.
What is done is done based on an expected payoff.
At the same time, the concept of the "invisible red line" is known from China, which describes the uncertainty about what exactly is socially desirable and whether the behavior demanded does not always have its downsides.
This applies not least to conformism itself, since society has always cultivated very different norms, the observance of which only coincidentally fits together.
When people obey red pedestrian lights on dead-end streets at night, they can expect both praise for doing the right thing and a description of being deadly obedient and therefore without a will.
Criminals are deviant like rebels, inventors like melancholics.
From this variety of deviations from the paths of virtue every community lives.
So if someone asked us where Europe is going, we would again be very reluctant to say, "To Bologna."