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What do you see in contrast to "the west"? I'm just curious what you're comparing the US (and possibly Western Europe) to. I don't see China as being a tremend

What do you see in contrast to "the west"? I'm just curious what you're comparing the US (and possibly Western Europe) to. I don't see China as being a tremendously high-trust social environment, for instance.

jpt4 11y ago
> What do you see in contrast to "the west"? The West of a previous time, presumably.
- r0naa 11y ago
  OP will correct me if I am mistaken but I read it that way: The "surprise/shock" that results from dealing with a cheating/dishonest entity is an instance of the confrontation between past and new Western standards for social trust. People are adapting to the fact that you cannot trust social entities as much as you did in the past. I would like to add that this is almost certainly a consequence of having governments that don't respect their own laws and broke the sacred trust between them and their citizens. Politcians and government are leading by example, whether they like it or not.
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    Media plays a part as well. It's hard to trust your neighbors when you're constantly seeing and hearing about people doing horrific things to each other on the nightly news.
carsongross 11y ago
I agree regarding China, and I think it will end up limiting economic growth there once they get past the industrialization bump. (I believe they are past it.) I contrast the west with, for example, Russia, which has a very intelligent work-force and extensive natural resources, but has been unable to break out of the corruption and lack of trust endemic to their culture. India is another example: there is no reason they shouldn't be a first world country looking only at their human and natural capital. The middle east is lousy with countries with incredibly intelligent peoples stuck in second-world (at best) conditions. And so on.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  Isn't colonialism is a much better explanation in the case of India and, to a lesser extent China?
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    No, it's poor to non-existent property rights and corruption. Look at Venezuela vs Chile for an example of two very similar countries with wildly differing property rights.
  - Chinjut 11y ago
    Perhaps it's the legacy of colonialism which gives rise to the "low-trust" structure of modern India?
  - hga 11y ago
    A country with rather rigid castes and 40,000 endogamous groups is likely never going to be high trust. "Colonialism" if anything cut against these two facts. Don't know about China, but they do have an issue with colonialism going back centuries and centuries, even if the Han culture eventually "conquered" the invaders.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    It needs a bit more than that. All the Americas were colonized, and most (but not all) are doing better than India. Indonesia is roughly twice as rich per capita. South Africa is even richer. And Malaysia even richer than it. Algeria, Libya. Korea and Taiwan were both colonized and much more exposed to WW2, and they're very well off. The poorest countries in the world were mostly colonized, but that's because most of the world has been victims of colonialism. And the effects of colonialism reverberate to the present day. But it's not really powerful IMO as an explanatory variable for differences in human development in the non-European world.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, do you see any specific countries as having a generally non-intelligent workforce? If not, why mention it specifically for Russia and India?
hga 11y ago
Add Japan to the list of "the west" about this; obviously not all that western, but famously a high trust society, which also obviously had made a fantastic difference in their economic growth.
r0naa 11y ago
I think your read the parent comment wrong. OP is specifically talking about devolving from a high-trust environment to a lower (or low) one. China (afaik) is just an environment with low social trust. That's an interesting counter-argument to OP's last assertion (with whom I agree) since China has +10% economic /year while having really poor social trust standards.

jpt4 11y ago

> What do you see in contrast to "the west"? The West of a previous time, presumably.

r0naa 11y ago
OP will correct me if I am mistaken but I read it that way: The "surprise/shock" that results from dealing with a cheating/dishonest entity is an instance of the confrontation between past and new Western standards for social trust. People are adapting to the fact that you cannot trust social entities as much as you did in the past. I would like to add that this is almost certainly a consequence of having governments that don't respect their own laws and broke the sacred trust between them and their citizens. Politcians and government are leading by example, whether they like it or not.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  Media plays a part as well. It's hard to trust your neighbors when you're constantly seeing and hearing about people doing horrific things to each other on the nightly news.

carsongross 11y ago

I agree regarding China, and I think it will end up limiting economic growth there once they get past the industrialization bump. (I believe they are past it.) I contrast the west with, for example, Russia, which has a very intelligent work-force and extensive natural resources, but has been unable to break out of the corruption and lack of trust endemic to their culture. India is another example: there is no reason they shouldn't be a first world country looking only at their human and natural capital. The middle east is lousy with countries with incredibly intelligent peoples stuck in second-world (at best) conditions. And so on.

nmrm2 11y ago
Isn't colonialism is a much better explanation in the case of India and, to a lesser extent China?
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  No, it's poor to non-existent property rights and corruption. Look at Venezuela vs Chile for an example of two very similar countries with wildly differing property rights.
- Chinjut 11y ago
  Perhaps it's the legacy of colonialism which gives rise to the "low-trust" structure of modern India?
- hga 11y ago
  A country with rather rigid castes and 40,000 endogamous groups is likely never going to be high trust. "Colonialism" if anything cut against these two facts. Don't know about China, but they do have an issue with colonialism going back centuries and centuries, even if the Han culture eventually "conquered" the invaders.
- scarmig 11y ago
  It needs a bit more than that. All the Americas were colonized, and most (but not all) are doing better than India. Indonesia is roughly twice as rich per capita. South Africa is even richer. And Malaysia even richer than it. Algeria, Libya. Korea and Taiwan were both colonized and much more exposed to WW2, and they're very well off. The poorest countries in the world were mostly colonized, but that's because most of the world has been victims of colonialism. And the effects of colonialism reverberate to the present day. But it's not really powerful IMO as an explanatory variable for differences in human development in the non-European world.
toothbrush 11y ago
Out of curiosity, do you see any specific countries as having a generally non-intelligent workforce? If not, why mention it specifically for Russia and India?

hga 11y ago

Add Japan to the list of "the west" about this; obviously not all that western, but famously a high trust society, which also obviously had made a fantastic difference in their economic growth.

r0naa 11y ago

I think your read the parent comment wrong. OP is specifically talking about devolving from a high-trust environment to a lower (or low) one. China (afaik) is just an environment with low social trust. That's an interesting counter-argument to OP's last assertion (with whom I agree) since China has +10% economic /year while having really poor social trust standards.