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> The US is a low trust society. Not at all. Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guaran

> The US is a low trust society. Not at all. Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). You order food for pickup, and the great majority of restaurants will let you walk in and pick a bag off an unattended table without any attempt to verify that you did in fact order what you're taking; and anecdotally, I've never had my order be taken by somebody else, accidentally or otherwise. The US is a high trust society.

jaywalk 5y ago
>Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). That's not how credit cards work. At all. >You order food for pickup, and the great majority of restaurants will let you walk in and pick a bag off an unattended table without any attempt to verify that you did in fact order what you're taking I have literally never seen this once in my life. Where do you live where the "great majority" of restaurants operate this way?
- samizdette 5y ago
  Chipotle and Starbucks do it with online orders. However, they do that because they are big enough corporations to replace anything wrongly taken for free.
  - kaibee 5y ago
    This really varies a lot with where you live. I'm almost an hour out of philly, very solidly middle-class office-y medical/pharma area and yeah, the sushi place I go to (not a chain, local place) just lays out the stuff on the counter for pickup, and you just look at the attached receipt since you actually what _you_ ordered. This would of course be ludicrous to do in some parts of the city itself.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  >>Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). >That's not how credit cards work. At all. Not the OP, but that's exactly how cards work. When a card is swiped the seller doesn't receive the funds until possibly days later. There is absolutely no guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money, since it can be disputed or charged-back.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    In retail, the actual risk of not receiving money for a credit card transaction is pretty low. In the case of a stolen credit card, the retailer is not responsible for the fraud and will be paid. Outside of some sort of mistake (or outright fraud) on the part of the retailer that they refuse to correct, the fact that the credit card was physically present resolves pretty much everything else.
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      Yes. I didn't say that the risk is incredibly high. If it were, cards would not be used. The point was that payment is not guaranteed, since chargebacks are allowed.
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        The risk is 0.001%, and it brings in 30% (or whatever) more business. This has nothing to do with trust, it's a simple equation.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        You're comparing apples and oranges. This is not a risk, revenue, or trust discussion. The discussion was that credit card payments are not guaranteed due to chargebacks. This is a truism and has nothing to do with the percentatge of chargebacks that occur.
mikestew 5y ago
Forget credit cards, the U. S. is a place where you can scrawl your name and a monetary amount on a piece of paper and people will accept it as if it is cash. If that isn't "high trust", I don't know what is. (Granted, these days that piece of paper gets run through Telecheck or whatever, so the risk has gone way down that last few decades.)
- Rapzid 5y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe anyone has accepted significant funds like that in a very long time unless it was for some invoice; that is to say you already owed the money.
burlesona 5y ago
Honestly, as I've now lived in 9 different cities all across the US, what I've learned is that the US is wildly heterogeneous and generalizations about it are therefore rarely useful or resonant.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
All that stuff is not done out of trust but because it’s cheaper for them to not verify things. Amazon doesn’t make returns easy because they trust you but because they have run the numbers.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Not at all. Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). Your ability to get a line of credit hinges upon an invasive scoring system that tallies your creditworthiness by a multi-billion dollar opaque bureaucracy. When you go to buy something at the retail level, you're watched by dozens of cameras that record you from the second you drive into the parking lot. When you go to use those credit cards, cameras from every angle imaginable are in your face, and sometimes literally right in front of your face, so there is no ambiguity about who is making purchases and what payment methods they're using. One purpose these cameras serve is to collect evidence in case a customer should open a dispute with their creditor or do a charge back, and another is to collect evidence for criminal charges and prosecution. Retailers will share the video and other data they collect on "problem customers" with other retailers to use as they please. Also, if you use cash and pay with bills above $20, they'll either be denied or checked for forgery. I've also shopped at retailers where I didn't fit the image of their ideal customers, and have been followed around by employees and owners. You don't feel much trust in that type of situation.
princeb 5y ago
the US is a low personal trust, high systems trust society. there are plenty of facilities to accommodate personal failures, in the case of defaults, insolvencies, missed payment, breached contracts there is a highly developed legal system to accommodate arms-length remediation and for smaller issues, claims courts and arbitration. in finance industry, in the wholesale industry, there are self governing organizations to manage clearing, settlements, margining, penalties and incentives to perform regular and continuous contractual obligations, etc various checks and measures to avoid failures but also stopgaps to remediate failures when they happen. we don't need personal trust because there is systems trust. japan is a high personal trust system that obviates the need for high systems trust. insolvency proceedings in japan for example rely on private proceedings, social and familial relationships, instead of formal remediation. without the need for high systems trust, there is a virtually non-existent (high-yield) credit market, because companies don't "fail" in japan in the way we traditionally think of credit failures, and the outcomes of a credit event is non-standard and very difficult to predict. furthermore, if you are an outsider to the personal trust system, it is very difficult to fully participate in society.
kristjansson 5y ago
This is _strongly_ dependent on location. One could probably infer many attributes of a zip code to reasonable accuracy based only on how far the Starbucks in the area place pickup orders from the entry door.

jaywalk 5y ago

>Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). That's not how credit cards work. At all. >You order food for pickup, and the great majority of restaurants will let you walk in and pick a bag off an unattended table without any attempt to verify that you did in fact order what you're taking I have literally never seen this once in my life. Where do you live where the "great majority" of restaurants operate this way?

samizdette 5y ago
Chipotle and Starbucks do it with online orders. However, they do that because they are big enough corporations to replace anything wrongly taken for free.
- kaibee 5y ago
  This really varies a lot with where you live. I'm almost an hour out of philly, very solidly middle-class office-y medical/pharma area and yeah, the sushi place I go to (not a chain, local place) just lays out the stuff on the counter for pickup, and you just look at the attached receipt since you actually what _you_ ordered. This would of course be ludicrous to do in some parts of the city itself.
IncRnd 5y ago
>>Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). >That's not how credit cards work. At all. Not the OP, but that's exactly how cards work. When a card is swiped the seller doesn't receive the funds until possibly days later. There is absolutely no guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money, since it can be disputed or charged-back.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  In retail, the actual risk of not receiving money for a credit card transaction is pretty low. In the case of a stolen credit card, the retailer is not responsible for the fraud and will be paid. Outside of some sort of mistake (or outright fraud) on the part of the retailer that they refuse to correct, the fact that the credit card was physically present resolves pretty much everything else.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    Yes. I didn't say that the risk is incredibly high. If it were, cards would not be used. The point was that payment is not guaranteed, since chargebacks are allowed.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      The risk is 0.001%, and it brings in 30% (or whatever) more business. This has nothing to do with trust, it's a simple equation.
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        You're comparing apples and oranges. This is not a risk, revenue, or trust discussion. The discussion was that credit card payments are not guaranteed due to chargebacks. This is a truism and has nothing to do with the percentatge of chargebacks that occur.

mikestew 5y ago

Forget credit cards, the U. S. is a place where you can scrawl your name and a monetary amount on a piece of paper and people will accept it as if it is cash. If that isn't "high trust", I don't know what is. (Granted, these days that piece of paper gets run through Telecheck or whatever, so the risk has gone way down that last few decades.)

Rapzid 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe anyone has accepted significant funds like that in a very long time unless it was for some invoice; that is to say you already owed the money.

burlesona 5y ago

Honestly, as I've now lived in 9 different cities all across the US, what I've learned is that the US is wildly heterogeneous and generalizations about it are therefore rarely useful or resonant.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

All that stuff is not done out of trust but because it’s cheaper for them to not verify things. Amazon doesn’t make returns easy because they trust you but because they have run the numbers.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> Not at all. Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). Your ability to get a line of credit hinges upon an invasive scoring system that tallies your creditworthiness by a multi-billion dollar opaque bureaucracy. When you go to buy something at the retail level, you're watched by dozens of cameras that record you from the second you drive into the parking lot. When you go to use those credit cards, cameras from every angle imaginable are in your face, and sometimes literally right in front of your face, so there is no ambiguity about who is making purchases and what payment methods they're using. One purpose these cameras serve is to collect evidence in case a customer should open a dispute with their creditor or do a charge back, and another is to collect evidence for criminal charges and prosecution. Retailers will share the video and other data they collect on "problem customers" with other retailers to use as they please. Also, if you use cash and pay with bills above $20, they'll either be denied or checked for forgery. I've also shopped at retailers where I didn't fit the image of their ideal customers, and have been followed around by employees and owners. You don't feel much trust in that type of situation.

princeb 5y ago

the US is a low personal trust, high systems trust society. there are plenty of facilities to accommodate personal failures, in the case of defaults, insolvencies, missed payment, breached contracts there is a highly developed legal system to accommodate arms-length remediation and for smaller issues, claims courts and arbitration. in finance industry, in the wholesale industry, there are self governing organizations to manage clearing, settlements, margining, penalties and incentives to perform regular and continuous contractual obligations, etc various checks and measures to avoid failures but also stopgaps to remediate failures when they happen. we don't need personal trust because there is systems trust. japan is a high personal trust system that obviates the need for high systems trust. insolvency proceedings in japan for example rely on private proceedings, social and familial relationships, instead of formal remediation. without the need for high systems trust, there is a virtually non-existent (high-yield) credit market, because companies don't "fail" in japan in the way we traditionally think of credit failures, and the outcomes of a credit event is non-standard and very difficult to predict. furthermore, if you are an outsider to the personal trust system, it is very difficult to fully participate in society.

kristjansson 5y ago

This is _strongly_ dependent on location. One could probably infer many attributes of a zip code to reasonable accuracy based only on how far the Starbucks in the area place pickup orders from the entry door.