[elgfare]

This rings extremely true for me. I live in Norway, which in my experience is significantly more trusting than most other places, and it's wonderful. We do have other transaction costs though, like a fear of "bothering" each other. Different problem, similar effect.

[mlinhares]

At a much smaller scale, though. After living most of my life in Brazil, I still bristle at how stuff happens here in the US, with much less papertrail than I'm used to because people often trust the systems and people in place.

When I bought a home I just wired the down payment, didn't get anything other than the bank statement saying I had wired the money. In Brazil I'd get a paper proving they got it and stuff.

So while the fear of "bothering" is real, the fear of losing a considerable amount of money because the person on the other side is not trustworthy (and I'd say Brazilians in general assume no one is trustworthy) is worse in a much bigger scale. I'm not sure I'll ever be as carefree as americans but not having to care as much as I used to back in Brazil has been a huge boost for my mental health.

[harlanji]

I’m feeling it in the other direction. I’ve been lucky to live a relatively carefree and unproblematic life in the US middle-class, until the last few years where I’ve attracted a well funded legal team to stalk everything I do and find faults. Now, I think living in a low trust society sounds great because the Boomers and other optimists in my life are starting to leave me alone. They don’t doubt my story, but it’s also beyond what they can process as real—former inmates and first generation Latin and Afro folk who I work with can fully comprehend the situation of being terrorized by lawyers and their “investigators.” Suddenly I am forced to be a low-trust person, and it’s not natural or pleasant... I’m mostly Scandinavian by blood, with a little of everything mixed in.

[elgfare]

I see what you mean, and when it comes to institutions and government, we are also very trusting.

[elgfare]

That is, we trust institutions because we trust that the government has our backs if they screw us.

[mikem170]

I'm curious, do you think that a high-trust culture tends to be more conformist? I wonder if the two go together.