[rafram]

I’ve been seeing this “high-trust society” dog whistle a lot lately, and I think it’s one of the funniest of its kind. You truly want me to believe that the United States, a country with a history of slavery and segregation, a country that went through a historical period dominated by people literally called “robber barons,” was a high-trust society before immigrants from less industrialized places came and ruined that?

[jandrewrogers]

It isn’t a dog whistle. The US actually does have a high-trust society compared to most of the world. Petty theft, snatching, pickpockets, scams, etc are relatively uncommon compared to e.g. many popular places in Europe. Americans are famously vulnerable to it when traveling because it isn’t really part of their domestic threat environment. In many areas, Americans don’t bother to lock anything. You can leave stuff out in public places and it is unlikely to be stolen.

I would say it is lower trust today than when I was a child. Some cities have developed real petty theft problems due to disinterested enforcement. It is still noticeably higher trust than most places in the world I’ve traveled.

[PedroBatista]

> Petty theft, snatching, pickpockets, scams, etc are relatively uncommon compared to e.g. many popular places in Europe.

Yes, in non-popular places in Europe those are also quite uncommon, even more then in the US on average..

So the lesson here is that those type of crimes are common in tourist heavy places, like.. Times Square in NYC for example.

[EPWN3D]

It really depends on the type of trust you're talking about. You're right that in many places in the US, people generally act honestly. But that's not always true -- porch pirates are still a huge problem in cities, for example.

Policy-wise, I would not describe the US as "high trust" relative to the rest of the first world. Virtually all of our non-senior welfare programs are means-tested or require some proof of virtue (e.g. "I am actively looking for a job" to collect unemployment insurance), meaning that society broadly does not "trust" people to collect benefits honestly unless they're seniors.

[dash2]

We can look this up empirically: https://ourworldindata.org/trust. It shows US is a medium-high trust society; lower than parts of Europe, and lower than China (assuming people answered honestly there!) but higher than most of Africa, South America and Asia.

[FireBeyond]

> But that's not always true -- porch pirates are still a huge problem in cities, for example.

I mean, a huge problem in suburbs and more quiet rural areas too, where porch pirates might in theory stand out more, but also have a lot less through traffic to observe their efforts.

[Griffinsauce]

> compared to e.g. many popular places in Europe

Citation and lots of specification needed.

[dd8601fn]

US office culture is generally pretty high trust. It has relatively high autonomy, authority, and low surveillance norms.

I don't know what that has to do with a historical period of slavery.

[ninjagoo]

> US office culture is generally pretty high trust. It has relatively high autonomy, authority, and low surveillance norms.

Unless you're black, or other disadvantaged minority

[t0mpr1c3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black

[peyton]

I think you could be more charitable, as GP said “culture,” not “society.”

Apple alleges not only individual malfeasance, but also recruitment tactics like “show-and-tell” aimed at recruiting those willing to bring company secrets (and discriminating against those who would not).

This is enough to constitute a low-trust culture that self-perpetuates.

Surely given the size of China there are plenty of honorable people. And surely in the US there are many dishonorable people, as you’ve pointed out.

[groundzeros2015]

Yes. People who grew up in the 40s and 50s in the US are common targets of scams because the world they grew up in is very trusting. Adults of the same age who grew up in the east bloc? Much more skeptical.

> history of slavery

Every country and group has practiced slavery.

[alwillis]

> Every country and group has practiced slavery.

The colonies and, later, the United States didn’t just practice slavery; they industrialized it by transporting by force 12.5 million Africans to the Americas for nearly 250 years.

Even as fortunes were made, that didn’t stop the torture, rape, and brutality of these enslaved people.

Even after the Civil War, the descendants of the former enslaved people had to live under the Apartheid-like system of Jim Crow that lasted for another hundred years until the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

[rixed]

I didn't read this that way at all. Society != country of origin. The US, like any country, is composed of many different cultures and more or less independent societies, some being high-trust/valuing more cooperation and some low-trust, valuing more competition.

[solenoid0937]

It isn't a dog whistle. Dubai, Japan are also high trust.

[NamlchakKhandro]

Your claims are a Marxist dog whistle.

[rafram]

Been a while since I’ve heard “Marxist” used that way.

[t0mpr1c3]

100%.

The US is high-trust for insiders (rich white people). We allowed Donald Trump to loot the richest and most powerful society in history by imagining that he would follow the example of previous presidents instead of seeing him for the sociopathic con man that he has always been.

Conversely, the US is zero-trust for outsiders such as foreigners, racially disfavored groups, and the poor. Allegedly-dog-eating Haitians and the like. We have guns and are not shy about using them. Being killed by police is a leading cause of death for young men of color, as noted by Ice Cube, and confirmed by researchers at Rutgers (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821204116).

[joe_mamba]

>I’ve been seeing this “high-trust society” dog whistle a lot lately

The concept of high trust and low trust societies is well studied and understood by everyone from academics to people on the street, and is one of the reasons why high trust societies are wealthy, safe, highly developed and low corruption, while low trust societies are generally not as much. It's not a dog whistle for anything racist, you're just being a malicious commentator ignoring the facts to make preposterous accusations in bad faith.

What is also very well studied and understood is the concept of tribalism and own-group bias between people of same religions, races, castes, etc. leading them to band together and exploit the trust of outsiders for their own gain, and why wealthy developed countries developed a strict rule of law legal system to try to mitigate this fact, as best as possible, even if it's imperfect and will never be fully solved because tribalism is too deeply ingrained.

But calling the identification and pointing out of scams by people from low trust environments abusing a high trust environment, a "dog whistle", is a cheap shot left wing liberals use to farm pitty and let criminals and scammers get away with it time and time again because the scams and crimes you point out, might turn out to be majority committed by certain groups of minorities or foreigners and they can't come to terms with that being a reality, so they make up a reason that must always be racism or discrimination.

With your logic, your white blood cells are committing a lot of dog whistles too, better remove them to not discriminate against bacteria and viruses.

Poeple like you making up inexistent dosgwhsitels left and right, like the boy who cried wolf, to derail the conversation away from the crimes towards non existent racism, is what led to people being fatigued with this cancel culture, and to Trump to getting elected. I hope you're happy with what you done.

[kkarakk]

trump totally wasn't elected with the help of foreign interference no sir, it was all on the up and up will of the people to have an incompetent waging war in iran(despite saying he wouldn't) and siphoning up money from crypto scams and insider trading.

[joe_mamba]

You went so far off-topic that I'm surprised you forgot to mention Jan-6