Ninth Step: Measure Their Behaviour

You do not need to force a person if you can score them

The simplest system of behavioural steering does not need a police officer. It only needs a difference between desirable and undesirable behaviour. Do this and you pay less. Do that and you pay more. Shift your energy use to another hour and receive a better price. Drive more carefully and receive a lower insurance premium. Exercise enough and receive a discount or reward. All of these already exist in different forms. And in many cases they are useful. But the civilisational change is larger than any individual discount.

Behaviour becomes an economic variable. Once that happens, the system no longer needs only laws. It can use prices. Points. Discounts. Bonuses. Access. Priority. A higher premium. A lower premium. And the person begins to adapt before anything has been formally prohibited.

The car can already score the driver

Insurance has a model known as usage-based insurance, or telematics. The idea is simple. Instead of assessing risk only from age, accident history, vehicle type and place of residence, the insurer can begin measuring your actual behaviour behind the wheel. The U.S. National Association of Insurance Commissioners explains that telematics can monitor:[3] miles driven, time of driving, location, rapid acceleration, hard braking, sharp cornering and other data. The insurer can then use that information to determine the premium.

This is not a futuristic scenario. It is an existing business model. And it is not necessarily bad in itself. A careful driver may pay less than a dangerous one. But look at the principle. The price of a service begins to adjust to the behaviour of an individual measured by the system in real time or through a digital profile. Once the principle is accepted, the only remaining question is its field of application. Today driving. Tomorrow health. Energy. Mobility. Consumption. Carbon. What if one day the question is no longer whether behaviour is measured, but simply: which behaviour may be rewarded and which may be penalised?

The body already produces points

Health too is increasingly becoming a stream of data. Smart watches count steps, heart rate, exercise, sleep and other indicators. This can be extraordinarily useful. But the data are not necessarily only for you. John Hancock, for example, offers the Vitality life-insurance programme, in which customers can earn points for healthy behaviour. A higher status can mean greater rewards and savings of up to 25% on premiums for certain products.[4]

The Apple Watch component of the programme also links the monthly cost of the device to the number of exercise points earned. Again: voluntary. Again: potentially useful. But the principle is clear. Health behaviour is measured, translated into points and connected to economic benefit. What if a future system no longer asks only whether we want to participate and receive a discount, but why the community should treat someone who does not meet prescribed health targets in exactly the same way?

To many people such a question would sound rational. That is precisely where its power lies. Major changes rarely arrive as obvious punishment. They arrive as optimisation.

The home is becoming measurable too

A smart meter does not measure only how much electricity you used in one month. It can provide much more precise data about the timing pattern of consumption. The European Commission promotes the deployment of smart meters, dynamic pricing and interoperable access to metering data. By the end of 2024, around 60% of European households had a smart electricity meter, and penetration had already exceeded 80% in fifteen EU countries.[5] The official reasons are reasonable.[6][7]

More accurate bills. Better grid management. More renewable energy. Cheaper electricity when supply is abundant. The ability for a household to shift consumption to less congested hours. But look at what this means technically. The system no longer knows only how much energy you used. It increasingly knows when you use it. And the European energy system is already developing towards price signals intended to encourage households to adapt consumption to grid conditions.

This is called flexibility. In a favourable form, it means you can run the washing machine at two in the morning rather than seven in the evening and perhaps pay less. But the same principle can be written differently: price becomes a signal through which the system changes the timing of your behaviour.

It is not an order. Not a prohibition. It is an incentive. And an incentive is often more effective than an order.

Carbon turns everyday life into an accounting category

Now we reach an area where the path moves even closer to lifestyle. Carbon. The EU has already created ETS2, a new emissions-trading system for fuels in buildings, road transport and additional sectors. Under the current plan, the system will become fully operational in 2028. Importantly, households and drivers will not directly purchase emissions allowances. The obligation sits upstream with fuel suppliers. But the carbon price is deliberately designed as a market signal intended to influence investment and consumption.[1]

The Commission says this openly: the aim is to encourage building renovation and lower-emission mobility. There is no secret. It is policy. The question for this series is the next one: What happens if the logic of carbon measurement one day moves from the company and supplier directly to the individual? That question is not invented.

A personal carbon budget has already been tested

In 2011 a four-week consumer trial of personal carbon allowances was conducted in the United Kingdom and studied by the Carbon Trust and Coca-Cola Enterprises. Participants were assigned a daily budget of 20 kilograms of CO₂e. The purpose was not to lock people in their homes. It was research into how the concept of a personal carbon budget might work in practice and how people would understand it. That distinction matters. But the experiment proves something else:[2] the idea of translating an individual’s everyday consumption into a personal carbon account is not fantasy. It was concrete enough to be tested on people. And here begins the question that is too easily dismissed with ridicule. What if climate policy one day moves through the following sequence:

1. The state measures the emissions of the economy.

2. The company measures the emissions of the product.

3. The system assesses the carbon profile of the individual.

Today no universal mandatory personal carbon account exists in the EU. But the concept exists. The technology exists. The data infrastructure exists. And enough of our transactions, journeys and consumption are already digital that linking them one day would be considerably easier than it was twenty years ago. That is the reason for the warning. Not a claim that the system has already been introduced. A warning that it has become feasible.

Measurement also changes a person’s relationship with themselves

When every step becomes a number, something changes inside the person as well. They no longer ask only whether something is good for them, but also: what score did I get?

How many steps? How many calories? How many points? How many emissions? How many productive minutes? What rating? Measurement can help. But measurement can also turn a value into a score. And a score can be compared with a norm. A norm is always set somewhere. Someone decides how much is enough. Someone decides what is healthy. Someone decides what is sustainable. Someone decides which behaviour is risky. Someone decides which threshold earns a reward. And someone can change the threshold later.

What if the social credit system of the future is never called “social credit”?

People often imagine social credit as one central government number. Perhaps that is too primitive an image. What if one number is not needed? What if several separate scores are enough? An insurance profile. A credit profile. A carbon profile. A health profile. A behavioural profile. A risk profile. A fraud score. A device-trust score. A driving score. Each system has its own legitimate explanation. Each evaluates only a small part of a person. But the person lives through all these systems at the same time.

And if they are one day connected through digital identity, money or interoperable data standards, something can emerge that is functionally very similar to scoring the whole person — even if there is never one screen labelled SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE. This is important to understand. Future control does not have to be centralised in one table. It can be distributed across ten systems, each deciding a small part of your life. The combined result can be the same.

First the reward, then the expectation

Every system of behavioural steering has a natural evolution. At first there is a reward. If you want to participate, you do. If you do not, you do not. Then enough people participate for the new model to become normal. Then the question appears:

Why should those who do not participate receive the same terms?

And here a voluntary reward can turn into an indirect penalty. Not because someone necessarily planned punishment from the beginning, but because the economics of the system begins to distinguish between those who provide data and those who do not. Between those who adapt and those who do not. Between a “good” and a “bad” profile. This is the moment when we should pay particular attention. Because from here on, freedom is no longer only a question of:

Are you allowed to do something?

It also becomes:

Can you afford not to do it?

You do not need to ban driving if you can make it more expensive

You do not need to prohibit a particular pattern of energy use if you can make it significantly more expensive at the wrong time. You do not need to order a person to exercise if you can connect their behaviour to economic benefits. You do not need to formally restrict a lifestyle if you can price it through a sufficiently large number of economic signals. This is a much softer form of power. And therefore it can become much more acceptable. The person still has a choice. On paper. But every choice has its price. And the system can begin deciding which choice will be cheap and which expensive. This is behavioural administration without a visible stick.

What if this is only preparation?

What if smart meters are only meters? What if telematics is only fairer insurance? What if health points are only motivation? What if ETS2 is only an efficient way to reduce emissions? All of that can be true. But what if, over time, these systems begin to connect? Digital identity says who you are. Digital money says what you pay for. A smart meter measures energy. A phone measures movement.[1]

A car measures driving. A watch measures the body. A platform measures attention. A retailer measures consumption. And an algorithm turns all of it into a profile. Then the question is no longer whether the system knows enough. It does. The only question is: who may use the profile, and for what? That is a political question of the future. And if we do not answer it before the infrastructure is fully built, we may be answering it only after the cost of exit has become too high.

A fully measured person is ready for the next step

First we frightened the person. Then divided them. Broke their trust. Made them dependent. Took away their privacy. Turned identity into a digital key. Money into infrastructure that can be administered. Now we measure their behaviour. Once behaviour is measured, it can be priced. Once it has a price, it can be steered. Once steering becomes normal, the person no longer needs to be forced. They begin adapting themselves. Then comes the next step. If a person is dependent enough on systems they merely use, there is no longer any need for them truly to own anything.

It is enough to grant access. For as long as the conditions are met. First you measure the person. Then you measure their behaviour. Then you put a price on that behaviour. And one day, perhaps, the person themselves becomes a set of conditions they must satisfy in order for life to remain cheap, convenient and accessible.