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Yes, I think about this often. The US used to be a high trust society. It has lost much of that in my lifetime. Causes: Money is an abstraction of reputation

Yes, I think about this often. The US used to be a high trust society. It has lost much of that in my lifetime. Causes: Money is an abstraction of reputation and honor, and we have made it an (almost) total replacement. The problem with money is it does not have a record of how it was earned, unlike reputation. Extreme individualism. Almost no sense of community or commons. Everything is about the ego. Cars. Driving has become our main (and almost only) form of social interaction with our community. And it is all about "winning" as an individual, not about working together to get through a difficult situation. See all the HN comments about rude driving as the norm. Could go on, won't.

bambax 4y ago
> Money is an abstraction of reputation and honor Not in every part of the world. In many places, the dominant culture assumes people got rich by cheating and stealing. Which doesn't mean rich people aren't courted -- money's attractive in and of itself; but they don't get much true respect by default.
- metadat 4y ago
  Where is this place?
  - mantas 4y ago
    Sure checks out for my whereabouts in Eastern Europe... And it’s not just USSR legacy. It was there for a looong time since feudal era.
  - timknauf 4y ago
    In my country (New Zealand), while we wouldn’t expect that wealth necessarily came from cheating and stealing, the idea of money as “abstraction of reputation and honor” would be foreign to most, I think. For example, while there were some Trump supporters here, I think nearly everyone was confused about the assumption that his personal wealth implied anything about his worth or worthiness.
Red_Tarsius 4y ago
Multicultural societies, like empires, seem unlikely to ever reach a state of high trust. I'm struggling to find any historical counter-proof. The USSR tried to meld different cultures together for over half a century and its dissolution was immediately followed by ethnic separatism. The United States is also showing its cracks. New York, the melting pot par excellence, is a collection of many little ethnic enclaves and it's the farthest thing from high trust I could think of.
- orzig 4y ago
  Acknowledging that it is a big city, and “high trust“ is a vague concept: I strongly disagree with the characterization that New York City is “the furthest thing from high trust I can think of“ I have interacted with thousands of strangers there with near perfect shared understanding of basic city etiquette. That etiquette does not include warmth, and in fact the way that we have all learned it is someone being quite rude to us when we break the etiquette, but that the city functions at all suggests they are doing something right.
  - yCombLinks 4y ago
    High trust isn't nearly as vague as you make it out to be, and basic etiquette is only correlated. There's lots of research in this area. Francis Fukayama published the influential book "Trust" in 1995. Some key highlights about what high trust is. 1. "The most important habits that make up cultures have little to do with how one eats one's food or combs one's hair, but with the ethical codes by which societies regular behavior". 2. "Among the cultural habits that consitute virtues ... some... in particular, reciprocal trust - emerge only in a social context". 3. "The social virtues, including honesty, reliability, cooperativeness, and a sense of duty to others ...". This is just the introduction to the ideas of trust in society and how it functions, it isn't a vague concept though.
- pjc50 4y ago
  The Holy Roman Empire? Lasted many centuries, multi-language, fairly decentralized. The United States has only been legally multicultural and non-apartheit since .. the 1970s? New York is notorious for its historical crime problems, but it also has enough trust to support a global financial centre.
borbulon 4y ago
> Money is an abstraction of reputation and honor Money is an abstraction of _perceived_ reputation and honor, and therein lies the problem.
wavefunction 4y ago
>The US used to be a high trust society I don't believe this to be true, or I suppose I would require evidence for this claim that I haven't yet encountered in my life. I find when someone claims that "America used to be so much better" they're completely discounting the experience of all the people who weren't born into or existing in privilege or within the US "in-group." The US has always been distrustful of the indigenous people already inhabiting the North American continent, of newly arrived immigrants, of black people, of single men. Single women were sometimes witches and murdered for it and only recently trusted enough with their own personal freedom, which is being curtailed again. Atheists were never trusted. I really don't think the US was ever a "high-trust" society and there doesn't seem to be any evidence or foundation to claim that it was.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- asiachick 4y ago
  A society doesn't have to trust minorities to be a high trust society. Japan and Korean are arguably high trust societies but they clearly have lots issues with racism to "outsiders". That is not an excuse for racism. It's just saying your points have nothing to do with high trust or not high trust
  - wavefunction 4y ago
    Nobody said trusting minorities was a requirement of a high-trust society but I believe you've completely underlined my point, unintentionally. Immigrants aren't "outsiders" for example. And women and single men, atheists and others I mentioned have nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  This is an ok summary: "High-trust societies display a high degree of mutual trust not imposed by outside "contractual, legal or hierarchical regulation", but instead are based upon "prior moral consensus". Much writing on the subject refers to Francis Fukuyama's 1995 book, Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity, in which he describes "the ability of various peoples to organize effectively for commercial purposes without relying on blood ties or government intervention". A useful test imo is: would you feel comfortable leaving your expensive Macbook, unattended in public, confident nothing would happen to it? In Tokyo? Sure. Chicago, Detroit, NYC... Maybe not. People doing "the right thing" on their own, when nobody is watching. The big American cities used to be more like Tokyo in that regard. Now, you get stolen from and everyone agrees you were stupid and its wholly your fault. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_soc...
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
It is important to add that Nietzsche's idea that "God is dead" (more precisely, the role of religion in acting as a values substrate for society) has also slowly been playing out, which gives the forces you listed more space to grow. The concept of the last man as an antithesis to what life should be about feels quite close to a description of some Extremely Online people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man
BrainVirus 4y ago
Yeah, US was a very trusting society until it started using money, cars and converted to individualism. If only we could go back to our Communist roots. /s
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bambax 4y ago

> Money is an abstraction of reputation and honor Not in every part of the world. In many places, the dominant culture assumes people got rich by cheating and stealing. Which doesn't mean rich people aren't courted -- money's attractive in and of itself; but they don't get much true respect by default.

metadat 4y ago
Where is this place?
- mantas 4y ago
  Sure checks out for my whereabouts in Eastern Europe... And it’s not just USSR legacy. It was there for a looong time since feudal era.
- timknauf 4y ago
  In my country (New Zealand), while we wouldn’t expect that wealth necessarily came from cheating and stealing, the idea of money as “abstraction of reputation and honor” would be foreign to most, I think. For example, while there were some Trump supporters here, I think nearly everyone was confused about the assumption that his personal wealth implied anything about his worth or worthiness.

Red_Tarsius 4y ago

Multicultural societies, like empires, seem unlikely to ever reach a state of high trust. I'm struggling to find any historical counter-proof. The USSR tried to meld different cultures together for over half a century and its dissolution was immediately followed by ethnic separatism. The United States is also showing its cracks. New York, the melting pot par excellence, is a collection of many little ethnic enclaves and it's the farthest thing from high trust I could think of.

orzig 4y ago
Acknowledging that it is a big city, and “high trust“ is a vague concept: I strongly disagree with the characterization that New York City is “the furthest thing from high trust I can think of“ I have interacted with thousands of strangers there with near perfect shared understanding of basic city etiquette. That etiquette does not include warmth, and in fact the way that we have all learned it is someone being quite rude to us when we break the etiquette, but that the city functions at all suggests they are doing something right.
- yCombLinks 4y ago
  High trust isn't nearly as vague as you make it out to be, and basic etiquette is only correlated. There's lots of research in this area. Francis Fukayama published the influential book "Trust" in 1995. Some key highlights about what high trust is. 1. "The most important habits that make up cultures have little to do with how one eats one's food or combs one's hair, but with the ethical codes by which societies regular behavior". 2. "Among the cultural habits that consitute virtues ... some... in particular, reciprocal trust - emerge only in a social context". 3. "The social virtues, including honesty, reliability, cooperativeness, and a sense of duty to others ...". This is just the introduction to the ideas of trust in society and how it functions, it isn't a vague concept though.
pjc50 4y ago
The Holy Roman Empire? Lasted many centuries, multi-language, fairly decentralized. The United States has only been legally multicultural and non-apartheit since .. the 1970s? New York is notorious for its historical crime problems, but it also has enough trust to support a global financial centre.

borbulon 4y ago

> Money is an abstraction of reputation and honor Money is an abstraction of _perceived_ reputation and honor, and therein lies the problem.

wavefunction 4y ago

>The US used to be a high trust society I don't believe this to be true, or I suppose I would require evidence for this claim that I haven't yet encountered in my life. I find when someone claims that "America used to be so much better" they're completely discounting the experience of all the people who weren't born into or existing in privilege or within the US "in-group." The US has always been distrustful of the indigenous people already inhabiting the North American continent, of newly arrived immigrants, of black people, of single men. Single women were sometimes witches and murdered for it and only recently trusted enough with their own personal freedom, which is being curtailed again. Atheists were never trusted. I really don't think the US was ever a "high-trust" society and there doesn't seem to be any evidence or foundation to claim that it was.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
asiachick 4y ago
A society doesn't have to trust minorities to be a high trust society. Japan and Korean are arguably high trust societies but they clearly have lots issues with racism to "outsiders". That is not an excuse for racism. It's just saying your points have nothing to do with high trust or not high trust
- wavefunction 4y ago
  Nobody said trusting minorities was a requirement of a high-trust society but I believe you've completely underlined my point, unintentionally. Immigrants aren't "outsiders" for example. And women and single men, atheists and others I mentioned have nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
llanowarelves 4y ago
This is an ok summary: "High-trust societies display a high degree of mutual trust not imposed by outside "contractual, legal or hierarchical regulation", but instead are based upon "prior moral consensus". Much writing on the subject refers to Francis Fukuyama's 1995 book, Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity, in which he describes "the ability of various peoples to organize effectively for commercial purposes without relying on blood ties or government intervention". A useful test imo is: would you feel comfortable leaving your expensive Macbook, unattended in public, confident nothing would happen to it? In Tokyo? Sure. Chicago, Detroit, NYC... Maybe not. People doing "the right thing" on their own, when nobody is watching. The big American cities used to be more like Tokyo in that regard. Now, you get stolen from and everyone agrees you were stupid and its wholly your fault. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_soc...

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

It is important to add that Nietzsche's idea that "God is dead" (more precisely, the role of religion in acting as a values substrate for society) has also slowly been playing out, which gives the forces you listed more space to grow. The concept of the last man as an antithesis to what life should be about feels quite close to a description of some Extremely Online people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man

BrainVirus 4y ago

Yeah, US was a very trusting society until it started using money, cars and converted to individualism. If only we could go back to our Communist roots. /s

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]