High Trust Societies, Wealth, and PEZ

“These are volatile times, Your Highness.  The American Revolution lost your father the Colonies, the French Revolution murdered brave King Louis, and there are tremendous rumblings in Prussia, although that might have something to do with the sausages.” – Black Adder the Third

What was Bismarck’s favorite Queen song?  Under Prussia.

The world that most of us grew up in was far different from the world that we’re seeing today.  Among the biggest differences is that the United States was unequivocally the strongest economic power in the world.  Couple it with the “Western” bloc of non-Soviet Europe and Japan, it was amazingly dominant. The United States even stood next to smaller nations at the urinal, right next to them even though there were other urinals open, just to show that dominance.

When people today talk about cultural appropriation, they seem to forget that it’s largely American and British Commonwealth culture that was appropriated throughout the world.  Blue jeans?  Not invented nor popularized by Commiebloc nations, nope.  Nor rock and roll.

In that Western world, there was actually a stunning lack of diversity.  Want rock and roll?  Sure you could listen to the Scorpions® from Germany, AC/DC™ from Australia, Iron Maiden© from Bongland, or Dio™ from the United States, but it was all the same root.  The western world was a very homogeneous place, filled with trust due in large part to that shared sense of purpose and values.

A Catholic friend gave up cleaning the dryer filter.  For Lent.

The level of trust probably peaked in around 1965 in the United States.  In 1965, 77% of people felt that most people in the country were trustworthy, and now it’s down to 58%.  We lived (well, those who were alive in 1965) in a high trust society that rivals the top levels of trust in the world today, sort of like Denmark but without all the smørrebrød, bicycles, and yurp-de-yur sounds.

The thing about a high trust society is that transactions are easy when we have trust in one another.  If you show up to buy a 1884 Iron Chancellor Bismarck® PEZ™ dispenser that I’ve got for sale, well, you trust me that I own the PEZ® dispenser, that it’s real, and I trust you that the check you just gave me will clear or the cash you just gave me isn’t stolen.

And if the check doesn’t clear, you trust the local cops will solve the problem for you.  They’re not corrupt, or if they are, they’re not so corrupt as to ignore crimes, especially when they involve the Franco-Prussian War Limited Series PEZ® dispenser set.  A belief that crime is low and corruption is low is the key to creating the social trust to make a high trust society.

In a high trust world, this works well.

Is a sketchy Italian neighborhood called a spaghetto?

A high trust world, though, is not an anonymous world.  Conmen from Nigeria and India use the anonymity of the Internet to create situations where they can create the relationship required, the “confidence” that is the “con” in conman.  They then prey on people based on the residual trust from their high trust past.  There is a reason that the elderly are primary targets – they remember an America where predation was not the norm.

Right now, oddly, one of the highest trust cultures in the world (according to the Integrated Values Surveys, 2022) is China.  There are certainly several reasons for this.  First, the government will kill bankers for fraud.  Second, they’re almost all actually Chinese, which makes them a nation, not a country.  They (mainly) share the same culture, values, genes, and language.  That goes a long way – blood is thicker than water is a cliché that exists for a reason.

Generally, the higher the trust in a society, the greater the level of GDP per capita.  Denmark has the highest trust on the world, and is fourth in world GDP per capita.  It’s not perfectly correlated, though, the Chinese are high trust, they are low income.  But compare with India, which is close to the worst country, with a trust level of 17% and an annual GDP per capita of a used 2000 Nissan® Xterra© with a broken air conditioner.

I hear that Biden has just signed an order to combat global warming on his way out.  He sent three battalions of Marines to invade the Sun.

It doesn’t take much, though to turn a high trust world into a low trust world.  Basics like faith that elections are fair, and that only valid votes are counted go a long way toward maintaining stability.  You’d think that would be easy in 2024, but it’s not, since at least a third of the electorate wants any vote cast to be counted, rather than just valid ones.  But a conflict of visions like that lowers trust in our basic systems.

Additionally, trust that criminal prosecution will be fair and unbiased has to be held very highly, otherwise gangs of people seeking a justice that the courts didn’t give them will replace the system.  I’m thinking the political prosecution of the January 6 protesters is a horrible indicator.

In turn, this will lower the amount of wealth that can be created in society.  Trust is a form of wealth, but it’s also (mostly) a precondition for a country getting wealthy.

When I was born, I had four kidneys.  But as I grew up, two turned into adult knees.

But trust in society isn’t the same at every single place in society:  in Modern Mayberry, trust is pretty high.

Crimes are rarer here in Modern Mayberry, especially major crimes.  Mainly, we all know each other, and so except for drifters and tweakers, people are (mostly) honest.  People even drive more politely and more forgivingly in small towns because, if you’re a tool, sooner or later everyone will know.  Oh, and we have guns and constitutional carry and crime rates are much lower in places where people aren’t walking victims.  And the local prosecutor won’t charge a store owner with shooting a robber if the robber was armed.

Here in Modern Mayberry, it is still pretty high trust.  My kid drops off our car to get fixed and picks it up when the tire’s been replaced even before I pay.  The guy knows I’m good for it – I’ve been going to his business for over a decade.  Commerce is easy here, and so are most transactions.

Part of that, I think, is that the world here is still mainly local.  We don’t have a big-name chain bank, instead we have a few local banks run by local people that already know the families that live here.  For a farmer getting a loan, it’s much more about reputation than credit score, and a banker giving a loan that might wreck a borrower . . . won’t wreck the borrower.

There’s a moral implication when we work together as a community, a moral implication.  Huges systems are efficient, but the rob us of something

As we become more atomized and less homogeneous, trust is replaced by systems and barriers.  Our relatively homogeneous culture is replaced by a disingenuous god of diversity, where the beliefs of every culture but our own are celebrated.

Not all jokes about agriculture are corny.

A low trust culture is part of the definition of those “bad times that are brought about by weak men”.  And we have seen countries around the world be low trust for millennia.  That, though, has never been the fate of the West, at least not for long.

As I have long said, none of this will be easy.  But there is one problem – in a low trust society, how can I be sure my Limited Edition® Franco-Prussian War Commemorative Series™ PEZ© dispensers will be authentic?