6 ms·

I remember myself thinking about examples of lack of societal trust in Brazil, where I live, comparing to richer countries. Like european countries (Japan also

by soneca 10y ago

I remember myself thinking about examples of lack of societal trust in Brazil, where I live, comparing to richer countries. Like european countries (Japan also I guess) where you don't have a barrier entering the subway where it is verified if you paid the ticket. Only randomized sample checking. Then a relative told me a surreal example from Angola. There, public distribution of electricity is unreliable to say the least. So everyone who can afford has a gas fueled electric generator at home. But, in any apartment building, instead of having a big generator, at ground level, with all residents sharing the bill (like we have in several upper class buildings here in Brazil); each resident has their own small generator just outside their doors. So there is constant loud noise and constant smoke at the stairs and elevators (and a higher individual cost). The only reason for this (according to this relative) is lack of trust that everybody would consistently pay their share of the common bill. There is always several people who try to take advantage. So, I agree with the idea that societal trust is a requirement for economic development.

RodericDay 10y ago
Man, I feel the same way. I grew up in Peru, and throughout my life it was very common to talk about "gringos" as if they were incredibly naive, trusting idiots that could easily be swindled every which way. I swear the national motto could easily have been "el que no es conchudo muere por cojudo" (if you're not trying to take advantage of someone, you'll get punished for being an idiot). I was intrigued by this because, being pretty bad at haggling and swindling, I thought that trust is what let these "gringos" carry on with their business with a bit more focus, not look behind their backs at all times, trying to haggle everyone lest they get swindled by someone. Eventually I moved to Canada, and I was sort of validated in terms of things being so much better when ie: you don't have to haggle with every cabbie, or cop. Unfortuantely, in terms of social trust, I cannot really tell whether Peru is becoming more like Canada, or Canada more like Peru.
- berntb 10y ago
  I'm Scandinavian and live in Romania right now. I have quite good experience with the computer people, but the other locals... If I go to two dentists and ask what needs to be done, it is ~ 30% risk they both insist on expensive treatments -- but different ones... If they don't realize I live there, the stores often screw themselves out of a good customer. And so on. I'd describe it as the locals like more to screw people over than they like to earn money. I assumed it was some remaining cultural damage from the dictatorship, with short sightedness a good strategy since they couldn't plan? But maybe it is a more general thing?
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    Yes. It would be naive and racist to just assume that people just aren't trusting for some arbitrary reason. A lot of it is rooted in memory of having experienced exploitation and abuse from "official authorities" that they could not trust, for they were merely the enforcers of plutocrats.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      It's not "racist" to recognize failings in cultures. My dad left Bangladesh because he didn't want to raise kids in a country where he had to pay a bribe just to get a second phone line installed. That cultural trait isn't something us Bangladeshis get to blame on the British or whatever. It's deep-seated and long-standing. And it holds us back as a country and a people. What we really don't need is people calling any criticism of those cultural traits "racist." It's not healthy for the cultures that need external pressure to overcome these problems, and it undermines the internal reformers trying to move beyond them.
      - RodericDay 10y ago
        I think it is pretty racist to posit that the source is mysterious and possibly sticky to the people as they migrate and uphold visibly cultural habits such as dress and language. Peruvians haggle and bribe cops because it's fresh in everyone's memory that cops weren't impartial agents of justice, but paid-up enforcers of the colonizers. I expect the same holds for Bangladeshis. "Cultural traits" follow the money. In the 70s, South Koreans were a lazy, unproductive people. Now the stereotype is workaholic to the point of suicide. In the 1800s, Germans were thieves, now they're industrious. Look at culture if you want, but it's going to be much less instructive than economics and history. edit: It seems I "triggered" some of our resident race realists, since these posts are garnering a lot of silent downvotes lol
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        10y ago
jkot 10y ago
There is something similar in Greece, people can not pay their share for filling up common heating oil tank. Lot of houses are not heated in winter (sometimes bellow freezing with snow). It is not question of trust, but poverty. People are not gaming system to buy new car or TV. Food is more important than electricity or heat.
- Inthenameofmine 10y ago
  Yep. It's a question of liquidity, not trust. People are naturally inclined to do the right thing if they have enough to cover their basic needs. At least a vast majority, sufficient to survive free riders. A good example of this is how people in developing countries very often will.give a huge chunk of their income to close family members in need, something that rarely happens to such an extend in developed countries. The trust is there, but liquidity and enforcement is not possible beyond close family/clan.
- redsummer 10y ago
  I was in Greece recently and I noticed that all the apartment blocks had forests of aerials on top of them - one aerial for each apartment. In the UK, the forest is less dense. People are trusting enough to share their aerials.
gotchange 10y ago
What you're describing here is called "Social Capital"[0] and can be summed up very neatly with the question posed in that section of that entry [1] "do you trust the others?" which basically gets to the bottom of that issue which is trust. The "social trust deficit" phenomenon that plagues certain societies is one of those key implicit factors in the lagging economic performance in those societies as it drags and dampens economic activities due to the fact that doing business is all about trust and this prevailing social distrust across classes and communities is one giant road block to that end. Also, the example you cited about electric generators in Angola is yet another instance of "Conway's Law"[2] in play. Apparently, these people don't talk to each other and even if they do, it doesn't bridge the trust gap to unlock the potential that they might have to improve their standards of living and quality of life. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law
kgwgk 10y ago
> Like european countries (Japan also I guess) where you don't have a barrier entering the subway where it is verified if you paid the ticket. Only randomized sample checking. Which countries are those? My experience in subways in several European countries and Japan is that you cannot go through the turnstiles unless you have a ticket (well, you can jump over them, but I guess this is not what you meant).
- facepalm 10y ago
  In Germany there are usually no barriers to the subway.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    In France there are.
    - pimlottc 10y ago
      In Paris, yes. In Lille, no.
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        Ok, but Paris transports way more people that Lille ever will. And if you want to add Lyon, well it's like paris and it's the second/third city in France.
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    Thanks, it seems it is also the case in Vienna. Maybe it happens in other European countries, but in the cases I remember you need a ticket to enter: Paris, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon.
- bckygldstn 10y ago
  If not subways, then proof of payment systems are definitely the norm for light rail and busses around Europe. Though whether these systems are based on trust depends on the ticket price and the nature of the checks. My DB train tickets were checked on about 50% of the trips I took in Germany, meaning it was in my economic self-interest to pay the expensive fare every time.
ekianjo 10y ago
In Japan every passenger is controlled for the fee due in public transportation.
jrpt 10y ago
For the Angola example, can't you ask people to pay a little bit ahead of time, then use an apartment-wide generator, but stop the circuit breaker for the apartments that didn't pay?
- Inthenameofmine 10y ago
  Don't know about Angola, but in other developing countries what happens is that they bribe some electrician to put the wiring back. It's cheaper than paying the whole bill. Viewed in the larger context it makes total sense. If you don't have enough to survive you will do anything. Those anti-social behavioral patterns take years or even decades to un-learn, even when economic development has ticked up significantly.
- ISL 10y ago
  In some places, people do not trust the administrator of such a program. How will they know that the administrator won't abscond with the funds or toggle off the circuit breaker early? Trust, at the societal level, can take an extremely long time to build. For it to succeed, a sufficient number of people must transition from "knowing it's going to fail" to "believing it might work". An anecdote to illustrate the point: A friend served as a Peace Corps teacher in a small town. He was part of an effort to help a community effort to clear and farm a small plot of land. The night before the planned harvest, the fields were harvested by unknown actors, and the produce was available for sale all over town. Such an event can be both reasonable, "If I don't steal the food before someone else does, I won't get any at all" and patently corrosive to trust, as the event is evidence for the idea that, "collective efforts will always fail". Trust does succeed, though. It's worth the effort.
CM30 10y ago
> Like european countries (Japan also I guess) where you don't have a barrier entering the subway where it is verified if you paid the ticket. Only randomized sample checking. In the UK, this seems to vary significantly by the area and type of service. The London Underground and most National Rail services have barriers by the entrances to stations, but the DLR doesn't (unless it shares the building with one of the former types). Seems we need them too, since there are quite a few that like trying to get in without paying. Pretty sure that's the case with a lot of other transport services too, with the exception of buses. So I don't think it's as much of a societal trust thing. Quite a lot richer countries have stuff like this as well.
e15ctr0n 10y ago
In another developing country where there are frequent power outages, the building decided to get a diesel-powered generator for power backup, with all residents sharing the bill for the diesel. Residents started running their washing machines only on backup power (so all at the same time), the justification being that they've already paid for the diesel so why should they pay more for the electricity?
meira 10y ago
This is correlation, not causation. People living in high standard trust more (because lose of marginal money isn't a live-threat risk) or societies who trusts more becomes more developed? I guess that history backs more the first deduction.

by soneca 10y ago

RodericDay 10y ago

Man, I feel the same way. I grew up in Peru, and throughout my life it was very common to talk about "gringos" as if they were incredibly naive, trusting idiots that could easily be swindled every which way. I swear the national motto could easily have been "el que no es conchudo muere por cojudo" (if you're not trying to take advantage of someone, you'll get punished for being an idiot). I was intrigued by this because, being pretty bad at haggling and swindling, I thought that trust is what let these "gringos" carry on with their business with a bit more focus, not look behind their backs at all times, trying to haggle everyone lest they get swindled by someone. Eventually I moved to Canada, and I was sort of validated in terms of things being so much better when ie: you don't have to haggle with every cabbie, or cop. Unfortuantely, in terms of social trust, I cannot really tell whether Peru is becoming more like Canada, or Canada more like Peru.

berntb 10y ago
I'm Scandinavian and live in Romania right now. I have quite good experience with the computer people, but the other locals... If I go to two dentists and ask what needs to be done, it is ~ 30% risk they both insist on expensive treatments -- but different ones... If they don't realize I live there, the stores often screw themselves out of a good customer. And so on. I'd describe it as the locals like more to screw people over than they like to earn money. I assumed it was some remaining cultural damage from the dictatorship, with short sightedness a good strategy since they couldn't plan? But maybe it is a more general thing?
- RodericDay 10y ago
  Yes. It would be naive and racist to just assume that people just aren't trusting for some arbitrary reason. A lot of it is rooted in memory of having experienced exploitation and abuse from "official authorities" that they could not trust, for they were merely the enforcers of plutocrats.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    It's not "racist" to recognize failings in cultures. My dad left Bangladesh because he didn't want to raise kids in a country where he had to pay a bribe just to get a second phone line installed. That cultural trait isn't something us Bangladeshis get to blame on the British or whatever. It's deep-seated and long-standing. And it holds us back as a country and a people. What we really don't need is people calling any criticism of those cultural traits "racist." It's not healthy for the cultures that need external pressure to overcome these problems, and it undermines the internal reformers trying to move beyond them.
    - RodericDay 10y ago
      I think it is pretty racist to posit that the source is mysterious and possibly sticky to the people as they migrate and uphold visibly cultural habits such as dress and language. Peruvians haggle and bribe cops because it's fresh in everyone's memory that cops weren't impartial agents of justice, but paid-up enforcers of the colonizers. I expect the same holds for Bangladeshis. "Cultural traits" follow the money. In the 70s, South Koreans were a lazy, unproductive people. Now the stereotype is workaholic to the point of suicide. In the 1800s, Germans were thieves, now they're industrious. Look at culture if you want, but it's going to be much less instructive than economics and history. edit: It seems I "triggered" some of our resident race realists, since these posts are garnering a lot of silent downvotes lol
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - 10y ago

jkot 10y ago

There is something similar in Greece, people can not pay their share for filling up common heating oil tank. Lot of houses are not heated in winter (sometimes bellow freezing with snow). It is not question of trust, but poverty. People are not gaming system to buy new car or TV. Food is more important than electricity or heat.

Inthenameofmine 10y ago
Yep. It's a question of liquidity, not trust. People are naturally inclined to do the right thing if they have enough to cover their basic needs. At least a vast majority, sufficient to survive free riders. A good example of this is how people in developing countries very often will.give a huge chunk of their income to close family members in need, something that rarely happens to such an extend in developed countries. The trust is there, but liquidity and enforcement is not possible beyond close family/clan.
redsummer 10y ago
I was in Greece recently and I noticed that all the apartment blocks had forests of aerials on top of them - one aerial for each apartment. In the UK, the forest is less dense. People are trusting enough to share their aerials.

gotchange 10y ago

What you're describing here is called "Social Capital"[0] and can be summed up very neatly with the question posed in that section of that entry [1] "do you trust the others?" which basically gets to the bottom of that issue which is trust. The "social trust deficit" phenomenon that plagues certain societies is one of those key implicit factors in the lagging economic performance in those societies as it drags and dampens economic activities due to the fact that doing business is all about trust and this prevailing social distrust across classes and communities is one giant road block to that end. Also, the example you cited about electric generators in Angola is yet another instance of "Conway's Law"[2] in play. Apparently, these people don't talk to each other and even if they do, it doesn't bridge the trust gap to unlock the potential that they might have to improve their standards of living and quality of life. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital#Social_capital_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

kgwgk 10y ago

> Like european countries (Japan also I guess) where you don't have a barrier entering the subway where it is verified if you paid the ticket. Only randomized sample checking. Which countries are those? My experience in subways in several European countries and Japan is that you cannot go through the turnstiles unless you have a ticket (well, you can jump over them, but I guess this is not what you meant).

facepalm 10y ago
In Germany there are usually no barriers to the subway.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  In France there are.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    In Paris, yes. In Lille, no.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      Ok, but Paris transports way more people that Lille ever will. And if you want to add Lyon, well it's like paris and it's the second/third city in France.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  Thanks, it seems it is also the case in Vienna. Maybe it happens in other European countries, but in the cases I remember you need a ticket to enter: Paris, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon.
bckygldstn 10y ago
If not subways, then proof of payment systems are definitely the norm for light rail and busses around Europe. Though whether these systems are based on trust depends on the ticket price and the nature of the checks. My DB train tickets were checked on about 50% of the trips I took in Germany, meaning it was in my economic self-interest to pay the expensive fare every time.

ekianjo 10y ago

In Japan every passenger is controlled for the fee due in public transportation.

jrpt 10y ago

For the Angola example, can't you ask people to pay a little bit ahead of time, then use an apartment-wide generator, but stop the circuit breaker for the apartments that didn't pay?

Inthenameofmine 10y ago
Don't know about Angola, but in other developing countries what happens is that they bribe some electrician to put the wiring back. It's cheaper than paying the whole bill. Viewed in the larger context it makes total sense. If you don't have enough to survive you will do anything. Those anti-social behavioral patterns take years or even decades to un-learn, even when economic development has ticked up significantly.
ISL 10y ago
In some places, people do not trust the administrator of such a program. How will they know that the administrator won't abscond with the funds or toggle off the circuit breaker early? Trust, at the societal level, can take an extremely long time to build. For it to succeed, a sufficient number of people must transition from "knowing it's going to fail" to "believing it might work". An anecdote to illustrate the point: A friend served as a Peace Corps teacher in a small town. He was part of an effort to help a community effort to clear and farm a small plot of land. The night before the planned harvest, the fields were harvested by unknown actors, and the produce was available for sale all over town. Such an event can be both reasonable, "If I don't steal the food before someone else does, I won't get any at all" and patently corrosive to trust, as the event is evidence for the idea that, "collective efforts will always fail". Trust does succeed, though. It's worth the effort.

CM30 10y ago

> Like european countries (Japan also I guess) where you don't have a barrier entering the subway where it is verified if you paid the ticket. Only randomized sample checking. In the UK, this seems to vary significantly by the area and type of service. The London Underground and most National Rail services have barriers by the entrances to stations, but the DLR doesn't (unless it shares the building with one of the former types). Seems we need them too, since there are quite a few that like trying to get in without paying. Pretty sure that's the case with a lot of other transport services too, with the exception of buses. So I don't think it's as much of a societal trust thing. Quite a lot richer countries have stuff like this as well.

e15ctr0n 10y ago

In another developing country where there are frequent power outages, the building decided to get a diesel-powered generator for power backup, with all residents sharing the bill for the diesel. Residents started running their washing machines only on backup power (so all at the same time), the justification being that they've already paid for the diesel so why should they pay more for the electricity?

meira 10y ago

This is correlation, not causation. People living in high standard trust more (because lose of marginal money isn't a live-threat risk) or societies who trusts more becomes more developed? I guess that history backs more the first deduction.