Comment by Der_Einzige

20 hours ago

Honestly, having been to high trust places like Singapore for a decent amount of time - it's better to live in a low trust society. Singapore is easily one of the most boring, sad, depressing places on earth despite it being on paper a paradise according to education, health care, etc rates.

High trust in society correlates strongly with being anti-innovative. Europe is going through another lost decade in a row because it got too addicted to social democracy. The fastest growing parts of Europe are some of the lowest trust (i.e. Poland). Please fleece the tax payer more.

7 comments

Der_Einzige

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rayiner  19 hours ago

I love how we’re actively cheerleading third worldism now. Boring is good, bland is good, efficient systems that assume high trust are good. Unless you’re Norway or Denmark, you should try to make your country more like Singapore.

  • qsera  18 hours ago

    Boring is not good if you are interested in something that is not boring!

    More fun always come with more risk. Everyone has their own threshold. So it is pointless to say that "Boring is good". It might be good for you, but not for everyone.

    • rayiner  16 hours ago

      Fun fact: America got rich by being boring. America never went through periods of rapid GDP per capita growth like you see with China. Instead, it’s rich because it has grown at a consistent 2% almost continuously for 200 years, minus a couple of blips before/after the civil war and great depression: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/theres-one-thing-we-can-alway...

      Boring, high trust societies are conducive to risk taking. High trust reduces transaction costs. And people are more likely to take risks when they can trust the system under their feet is orderly, stable, and trustworthy.

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    • fc417fc802  17 hours ago

      There's no fundamental mechanism (at least that I'm aware) that stops a high trust system from awarding funds to a risky venture. If that's not happening it's a systemic problem (or feature as the case might be) as opposed to some fundamental mechanism dictating covariance.

      I think in practice the conditions that lead to high trust societies forming also tend to lead to culturally valuing predictability which translates to a bias against risk. But that's not an inherent part of high trust rather that's just how things happen to be at a given point in time.

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