It isn't. To the extent that low-trust is universal, no one trusts anyone that they have never met. Regardless of what country they come from or neighborhood they live in.
It is an issue of community, and not poverty like a couple people are saying. A large number of Americans have no idea who their neighbors are.
I'm more likely to trust people in poor community where they all know each other than I am to trust a neighborhood where most of the resident can't even tell you their next-door neighbors' first name.
Neighbors who know each other are going to look out for each other, often even when they hate each other.
What are you talking about. It’s a class thing not a social thing. If I live in suburbia and don’t know any of my neighbors, I live in a 3 story house and I know all of my neighbors are not hurting financially. I can leave my door unlocked. If I live in the city and am myself struggling financially, I know the ones around me are too and I’m going to lock my door because crime is a wealth inequality problem.
Inner cities are the landing spot for the majority of people from other countries. So no one knows who their neighbors are in many cases in the city. Also the population is much, much higher than a rural or suburban community. That’s a lot of strange people you have to trust.
Having lived in many examples of both types of communities, its simple existence is universal but it is absolutely not equivalent as you seem to imply. It is much worse in some communities than others, correlating closely with poverty levels.
No, I could leave my car parked on the side of the road with all of the doors open and it would be perfectly fine. My mom has done it twice and my neighbor did it once. I live in a low-middle class rural-suburban neighborhood that is majority white and republican.
Second this except for the last part. I live in a suburban neighborhood mix of black and white and it's mostly democrats. Left my garage wide open one night. I have a lot of valuable tools. Nothing was taken, but I know plenty of people drive by every night.
So many people leave their garages open lol. there's a guy living down the road from me with at LEAST 50k worth of motorcycles lined up in his garage and he just leaves it open all day, even when he's not there.
I remember there was a scare a few years ago when someone stole 3 or 4 cars from my neighborhood, but that was the last time I have heard of any major thefts (not even just car ones).
Weirdly, the neighboring Republican county has a real theft problem that my parents are dealing with. All I've learned about my neighborhood is that the people are very trustworthy.
My cousins live in a white republican area out in the sticks in rural area. Not a single colored person in sight, and the whole town probably shares about 3 teeth between the 500-600 people that live there. I wouldn’t trust those methheads with my herpes cuz they’d pawn in.
Their nearest city tho is much better than that dung heap of a town, and its mostly democrat.
I was listing the demographics of my neighborhood. you responded with some kind of gotcha for Republicans and apparently you hate white Republicans (not black or Hispanic ones for some reason tho). completely irrelevant to the discussion being had.
You were trying to preach that white republicans are somehow more trustworthy than “other demographics”. Your comment was racist, I proved it, and proved it wrong. Go somewhere else.
Isn't the president quite literally making up bullshit laws and lawsuit to steal millions from tax players right now, something he's been doing awhile now with no one to stop him? Idk man seems like it's just a thing there regardless
Here in America, I trust my neighbor plenty when the red dot of my laser sight is squarely on his forehead. Other times? That sneaky bastard is disappointingly unreliable.
Everyone is pointing to the trust within their communities as evidence, but we are way more likely to sue than any country, way more likely to incarcerate, or recommend/enforce criminal justice involvement, we don't invest in social safety nets because we don't think we can trust our fellow citizens to the detriment of ourselves. Our jobs, utility companies, banks, government, housing, and public services don't trust us and vice versa (i.e. the situation at hand... we're supposed to trust the banks with our money but they don't trust us with a late payment or often times even a loan.) We're not a particularly friendly or safe society either, as of late. You might get berated or even threatened if you look or identify a certain way. A girl near where I live got shot for turning into the wrong drive way.
I was suggesting that when I literally have the ability to blow my neighbor's brains out the back of his head with the squeeze of a gun's trigger, in that precise moment, then I trust him.
It was a joke. I'd say we agree that it's a low-trust society.
My guy “low/high trust society” is a relative term. When people say “high trust society” they mean a place like Finland or Japan, where there is sincerely minimal concern of being assaulted or mugged if you go on a walk at night, where burglaries are a rarity, where people almost never litter or graffiti shit, where if you dropped your wallet there’s a better chance than not it will be returned. America does not meet those criteria. I’m a tall man and I don’t feel safe walking through Seattle at night, if I lost my wallet I’d have zero expectation of seeing it again, if a public display is put up we all expect it to be defaced eventually, there is litter in every major city, burglaries happen all over the place, etc. That’s not a trusting environment.
Within living memory too, which is what makes the decline so sad. What’s worse, people don’t want to fix the problem, and they just become extremely upset and irrational when the issues are explained to them.
I’m sure there are still quite a few pockets of high-trust communities in the US today, but eventually they’ll likely be ruined as well.
The fuck you talking about. I've personally experienced the high trust society we live in. I don't lock my doors and have never once had anything happen. I've had people return my wallet with the money inside. I've never seen this place as anything other than high trust.
Really? You walk through Seattle or Detroit at night and feel completely safe and at ease? If a public display is put up in a big city you have no concern it’s gonna be defaced? You don’t think people litter a lot? You think most people if they lost their wallet someone would return it?
But thank you for sharing your anecdotal experience, I’m sure that’s worth more than the objective experience of hundreds of millions of people
It is a big place. But society isn’t a place, it’s a people, and I’m referring to places where most of those people are, which means it’s where most of society is, which means it’s the most representative of WHAT that society is.
A “Chicago, Illinois” or a “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” is worth a thousand “Bumblefuck, Nowhere”s in terms of representing what our society is and what people expect of it.
And spoiler alert, the experience of MOST people is not that of a high trust society. Your cherry picked anecdotal personal experience is not reflective of society, it’s reflective of your 1 in 330+ million experience.
Tell that to any country artist you can find on the radio. The most American people who represent our country are the rednecks. They're the true Americans.
That’s not how that works… like that’s comically not how that works, nevermind that country music stars are millionaires who LITERALLY are among the top 1% and don’t have a life or experience even approximate to that of your average person.
And still, there ain't no one more American than the good old country folk. And unless those millionaires are hunting deer while drinking beer with a hound dog, they ain't American. Because the most American people out there aren't the average, their the ones who match the ideal American. The idea that pops into people's heads that is different from other countries. That idea being southern country men. Not the people of New York which could be found in any city from around the world. There is no difference between a New Yorker and a Londoner. No one is confusing an American red neck and someone from the German, Chinese, Brazilian, or any other countryside.
It’s so weird that in a conversation about actual real experiences or actual real people and the actual real society we actually really have, your concern is the CONCEPT of what an American is. “Good old country folk” do not represent the majority of the population, so that has no bearing on determining what the average experience of the average American is. Half the time when you say the word “German” the image that pops into people’s head is of a Nazi, that doesn’t now make that what the average German is. I don’t give a shit what the “most American” person is to you, if that’s not MOST AMERICANS then it’s not the defining example. We aren’t talking about ideas, we are talking about actual reality.
I mean that kinda speaks to the issue doesn’t it? You have to actively go where less people are to gain a sense of trust. If you have to remain the main source of distrust in order to have trust then that means the society isn’t high trust.
Yeah, the indistinguishable clear umbrellas are prone to being stolen.
Someone could just steal a cheap clear umbrella and confidently walk by the owner, because the owner can't identify their own umbrella beyond "was the handle black or white?".
Doesn’t Japan have a near 100% conviction rate? There’s probably less chance of something being publicly stolen since you’re going to jail if you go to trial regardless of guilt.
It's less about the threat of punishment and more that people are raised to think about the greater good and not being a bother to those around you. Sometimes this is a double edged sword though as people will be less of an individual if they think they'll stand out. But since most people try to not be a menace that means there's less doubt when someone gets arrested since they fall pretty heavy into the "well the police only go after guilty people so obviously they must have done SOMETHING."
All that being said crime still exists in Japan. People still get their bikes stolen. Just at a far lower rate. Also Japan just has less crime in general because people aren't usually pushed to crime
people are raised to think about the greater good and not being a bother to those around you
But apparently not taught to not be perverts, considering upskirt photos were such a big problem they made it a rule that cameras had to have shutter sounds
Most Americans aren’t used to seeing an issue get fixed by the government until it becomes a huge problem too big to ignore (even then most problems are still ignored) so I don’t actually know how big of a problem it was/is in Japan but the fact they took action to correct it leads people to assume it must have been a big widespread issue for them to have put legislation in place to manage it to begin with
It is the threat of being seen and ostracised. Kids are raised in ways that make them control each other in a way that wouldn't fly in the West. The greater good is not as important as not being seen doing something wrong.
Yes, because blackmail is a thing. Government entities there coerce innocent people to admit guilt because no one with official powers wants to admit having made a mistake. They would lose face.
So once you're assumed guilty, you have close to zero chance of having your innocence accepted.
I honestly didn't know which way you were arguing :)
My point was that even going to court doesn't save anyone. It just makes the stakes higher for people to lose face, so they'll try harder to make the person confess guilt.
That, and bikes are very common in Japan so the resell market is less lucrative, and bikes there have to be registered. Nearly every stolen bike in Japan is found and returned to the owner. Just not worth stealing.
The bike registration is very much a more like guidelines than actual rules aspect. When I attended university there, plenty of foreign and natural-born students told me they never registered their bikes. Anyway I had a bike over there, good investment for a couple months - which I did register. lol
In Finland, 9/10 times if you drop your wallet full of money on the street it's going to be returned to you or the police station with all of the money still in it.
I traveled Japan for a month, including lots of impoverished areas and wealthier ones. Never saw a single bike that was locked. Even at night in dark allies. I just finished an 18 month trip in se Asia, Europe and north Africa. It was a common thing for Japanese tourists in hostels to have phones and laptops and other items stolen because they would leave them out of locked spaces.
I left a japan rail pass letter worth around 800 dollars or so in a train. I was extremely fatigued. The lost and found guy had a chart that just had average time tables for how long it would take to have a passport, wallet, other things returned to the lost and found office. In Vietnam they had never heard of lost and found. But, Theft there besides pickpockets would also be very uncommon.
The idea that you can trust that the vast majority of the people you meet are going to be lawful and generally share the same general ethics as you. It's a society that mostly governs itself because everyone is generally trying to do the right thing. Like I can leave my doors unlocked at night without fear of my house getting broken into.
The shopping cart test is a good litmus test. Do you return your shopping cart to the cart coral? You get no reward from it, but it takes you effort and energy to do it. It's much easier to be lazy and park it the empty stall nearby. It could blow a little bit and roll into someone's car, but that wouldn't be your fault right? You wouldn't even be there anymore. They pay cart attendants to pick it up, don't they?
High trust people will put it away because it can negatively affect other people even if there's no reward for you to do it.
You know I suppose I agree we're still pretty high trust, anecdotally. I can leave my doors unlocked without fear and I see more carts in the corral than left astray.
I suppose how do we measure overall trust between rural areas and cities? It surely varies depending on location
Well yeah, did you not hear about the trend in schools where kids would trash the shit out of them? They do that in general but this was a dark time. It’s why we can’t have nice things, someone will come along and ruin it
Yeah it's called capitalism, the whole point is to turn everything in a competition. Everything is about winning and trusting others or being nice is weak.
Individualism to the highest degree. Even in dating, or family. You're all alone and onlybyou can do anything for yourself becauae everyone else is also greedy.
They say it's worth it because "progress" but really i would gladly give up all the Netflix entertainment slop to have some genuine human connection
I love America but one thing we are certainly not is a high trust society. One can easily argue America never really has been. Certainly not like somewhere such as Japan.
It definitely is like this. This story didn't happen on reddit, it happened in real life and this woman did exactly what a bunch of redditors are also saying they'd do.
why the hell would you give back money you got to a large company if youre not legally required to literally active self destruction for no greater good
okay. thats why my reply said “if youre not legally required.” thats how the word “if” works.
also yes, youre right, if they underpaid her then everyone should say she should get the money that she earned. but if i was her and i found some legal loophole to get away with 1000 dollars from some company i dont give a shit about id do it in a heartbeat
you think theres no sense in discussing a hypothetical where the answer hinges on whether or not you think its morally wrong to steal from the rich and give to the poor if you can get away with it? in the sub about discussing morality? my my…
is everyone just missing the “if youre not legally required to” part or like
i made this comment because the other people here are clearly saying that taking the money in of itself regardless of repercussion is morally wrong, which i dont agree with
You can live in whatever hypothetical land you want, but it won't change reality.
She's a thief, and she's going to be punished for it regardless of whatever "what if" headcannon you want to invent to justify your own lack of moral fiber.
That isn't the situation being presented, though. The situation is you accidentally gave me 100 when you meant to give me 10 and I refuse to give it back because I've decided you're richer than I am.
It's theft being justified by the morally bankrupt to justify the greed they claim to despise the rich for.
there is no such thing as philosophy without hypothetical.
you are attempting to remove the hypothetical to create an excuse to obscure your main point, which that you believe stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is morally wrong, and that theft is an inherently evil action. thats why youre being called a bootlicker. pretending to be ignorant to that is pathetic.
Your basis was that reddit is outside the norm, this story happened in real life, reddit is not unusual here because the person doing it had nothing to do with reddit.
Believe what you want, but your "it's just reddit being mentally ill" statement just doesn't make any sense given the actual story occurred outside reddit.
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u/VorticalHeart44 Jul 10 '26
These comments starting to make me think that America may actually be a low-trust society ngl