4 ms·

Sweden prior to 1990. Norway prior to 2010. Lived in both, know what I'm talking about. Germany today and in the 1800s. You know why we have delivery services

Sweden prior to 1990. Norway prior to 2010. Lived in both, know what I'm talking about. Germany today and in the 1800s. You know why we have delivery services (Amazon etc, prior to that catalog companies like Sears etc)? It started as mail order, which started in Germany. Because the society had enough trust that you could mail money to a stranger and expect them to send you the product. Also, the German post was a marvel of civic engineering. Government run projects at its best.

luckylion 4y ago
I'm in Germany and that time is long gone, I'd say that was pre-1990 or 1995. The trust is no longer there, and the German Post is a joke that is currently falling apart and hasn't worked in 10 days in many regions.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wahern 4y ago
  But can you send money through the system without expecting it to be stolen? In most postal systems around the world today, just the idea of sending money through the post sounds inherently naive. This is how high trust societies break down: cynicism. By objective standards things are no less than they were at the height of trust, but people's expectations have shifted and so subjectively people feel things are worse and begin withholding their trust. This is why wealth inequality can create such a dilemma, because even if everybody continues to become better off, if you feel relatively worse off, than from a social cohesion standpoint it's just as bad. As overall wealth increases, because of the power law (or whatever curve), you see an acceleration of absolute differences in wealth as the high end of the curve grows steeper. This dynamic makes for a quite difficult sociological problem, which perhaps can be categorized under the rubric, "mo' money, mo' problems".
  - luckylion 4y ago
    I wouldn't send money through the Post, and the idea sounds naive to me as well. I don't believe that nothing has changed, but it's hard to point to individual events that prove how they've changed, because they're small things that lead to changes, which lead to more changes. It's still very different between the cities and the more rural suburbs and fully rural villages, and you can see it very clearly when you watch for the small things, e.g. can you leave your bike outside a small store without locking it up. It is what it is, it's not coming back once it's lost. Today, crime that abuses the remains of Trust is rampant. Old people are tricked out of money by abusing their trust in authorities and their general trust that when somebody calls and says their daughter had an accident, that their daughter had an accident, because nobody would do such a cruel thing. And yet they do, happily laughing about it on TikTok, killing trust.
deleted 4y ago
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slavik81 4y ago
Germany was a bunch of seperate states until 1871 when Prussia finished conquering its neighbours. I don't understand how that could be a high-trust monocultural society in the 1800s.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > I don't understand how that could be a high-trust monocultural society in the 1800s. It makes sense if you squint hard, and understand that "culture" in such arguments, is being used as a proxy of something else that is no longer acceptable to say out loud in polite company. So it was a bunch of disparate states with different traditions, but the same European "culture" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
  - TimedToasts 4y ago
    This is an extremely bad faith take. The person you are replying to said nothing of the sort and now you're implying that they're a bad person. But not saying it out loud, of course. Just "the implications"...
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      I'd love to hear your good faith answer to gp's question on fractured polities that are now present-day Germany >> I don't understand how that could be a high-trust monocultural society in the 1800s.
  - llanowarelves 4y ago
    Bad faith. And it goes the other way, if you want to play that game. If what you were saying were true then "whiteness" couldn't possibly refer to things such as purely abstract cultural-norms (either don't exist or is weasel-word according to you). So then what are they referring to?
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      If my intepretation is in bad faith, I'm assuming you can answer GPs question then: how were the many pre-unification bavarian princedoms whose independent histories went back 100s of years monocultural?
watwut 4y ago
I know about pretty significant low trust high paranoia and violence period in German history. Or even more of them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
llanowarelves 4y ago
To see Germany's squandered potential all we need to look to is Japan (clean, safe, high-trust country with almost no homeless). They hawked a lot of stuff from Germany from that time period; Lots of loanwords, uniforms, civic systems copied. Germany really did lead the way. As did Anglos with the law.

luckylion 4y ago

I'm in Germany and that time is long gone, I'd say that was pre-1990 or 1995. The trust is no longer there, and the German Post is a joke that is currently falling apart and hasn't worked in 10 days in many regions.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wahern 4y ago
But can you send money through the system without expecting it to be stolen? In most postal systems around the world today, just the idea of sending money through the post sounds inherently naive. This is how high trust societies break down: cynicism. By objective standards things are no less than they were at the height of trust, but people's expectations have shifted and so subjectively people feel things are worse and begin withholding their trust. This is why wealth inequality can create such a dilemma, because even if everybody continues to become better off, if you feel relatively worse off, than from a social cohesion standpoint it's just as bad. As overall wealth increases, because of the power law (or whatever curve), you see an acceleration of absolute differences in wealth as the high end of the curve grows steeper. This dynamic makes for a quite difficult sociological problem, which perhaps can be categorized under the rubric, "mo' money, mo' problems".
- luckylion 4y ago
  I wouldn't send money through the Post, and the idea sounds naive to me as well. I don't believe that nothing has changed, but it's hard to point to individual events that prove how they've changed, because they're small things that lead to changes, which lead to more changes. It's still very different between the cities and the more rural suburbs and fully rural villages, and you can see it very clearly when you watch for the small things, e.g. can you leave your bike outside a small store without locking it up. It is what it is, it's not coming back once it's lost. Today, crime that abuses the remains of Trust is rampant. Old people are tricked out of money by abusing their trust in authorities and their general trust that when somebody calls and says their daughter had an accident, that their daughter had an accident, because nobody would do such a cruel thing. And yet they do, happily laughing about it on TikTok, killing trust.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

slavik81 4y ago

Germany was a bunch of seperate states until 1871 when Prussia finished conquering its neighbours. I don't understand how that could be a high-trust monocultural society in the 1800s.

sangnoir 4y ago
> I don't understand how that could be a high-trust monocultural society in the 1800s. It makes sense if you squint hard, and understand that "culture" in such arguments, is being used as a proxy of something else that is no longer acceptable to say out loud in polite company. So it was a bunch of disparate states with different traditions, but the same European "culture" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
- TimedToasts 4y ago
  This is an extremely bad faith take. The person you are replying to said nothing of the sort and now you're implying that they're a bad person. But not saying it out loud, of course. Just "the implications"...
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    I'd love to hear your good faith answer to gp's question on fractured polities that are now present-day Germany >> I don't understand how that could be a high-trust monocultural society in the 1800s.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  Bad faith. And it goes the other way, if you want to play that game. If what you were saying were true then "whiteness" couldn't possibly refer to things such as purely abstract cultural-norms (either don't exist or is weasel-word according to you). So then what are they referring to?
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    If my intepretation is in bad faith, I'm assuming you can answer GPs question then: how were the many pre-unification bavarian princedoms whose independent histories went back 100s of years monocultural?

watwut 4y ago

I know about pretty significant low trust high paranoia and violence period in German history. Or even more of them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

llanowarelves 4y ago

To see Germany's squandered potential all we need to look to is Japan (clean, safe, high-trust country with almost no homeless). They hawked a lot of stuff from Germany from that time period; Lots of loanwords, uniforms, civic systems copied. Germany really did lead the way. As did Anglos with the law.