> Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing

The phrase "the right thing" is load-bearing, to steal a Claudeism. The Muslim Brotherhood that ran the country before El-Sisi thought they were doing "the right thing." El-Sisi also thought he was doing "the right thing." Egyptians mostly thought El-Sisi was doing “the right thing” during this time period. According to multiple independent opinion polls, his approval rating was high during this period because people were grateful to have stability.

In any society, you're going to have diverse views of "the right thing." To have a functioning civil society, you actually need the opposite of what you're saying. You need a collective general trust that people will follow the rules regardless of what they think is "the right thing."

Logic compels this conclusion. People who disagree on fundamental aspects of how the world and society should work cannot cooperate in a civil society if we trust that everyone will follow their vision of "the right thing." The only way we can cooperate is if we agree to neutral rules and procedures, and have a collective general trust that we'll all follow the rules regardless of our view of wrong or right. The thing I admire most about Anglo-American culture is that people will jump off a bridge if you give them a court order that complies with all required procedural formalities. That's how you create a civil society.

I dunno, trust is a good foundation, and then you need some good ole fashioned checks and balances, required transparency & record-keeping.

I sense that the checks-and-balances & record-keeping around mass-force-push SMS in the US are now extremely stringent especially after the Hawaii incident. And I'm OK with the current situation here.

OTOH, the checks-and-balances/transparency situation around LPR camera networks is... basically non-existent. I am not OK with the current situation here.

Both of these situations in the same (relatively) high-trust US. The difference is one has some serious regulations around it, and the other is cowboying shit.

> trust

One interesting aspect ij academic literature about trust, it is highly reverse correlated with diversity. No matter the grouping and size, the more diverse, the less trust within the group.

Yes good point and in theory that's how it should work and mostly does. The interesting thing we're seeing is how it's playing out at a societal level with regards to the manipulation, gaslighting, cheating and bullying. I guess what I'm trying to say is that in individual interpersonal relationships, it sometimes takes a while for the victim to fully understand what's being done to them because the abuser is not only doing harmful things but then they also gaslight, manipulate, lie, etc. There's usually a lag effect for first time victims to fully understand what's being done to them, and now at a societal level it's taking a while for groups to understand the same pattern. The most unfortunate part of it all though is how many people and institutions are 'in on it' perse and continously prop up horrible behavior because it also suits them or in the case of bullying, they go along with the bullying so as to shield themselves from being the target.

Trust is a Continuum. I have relatives who grew up in places where you didn't need to lock the door at night and those who have to lock the door at night but that's enough and those for who that is not enough.

I am reminded of a story I read lately of a woman who was shocked when her passport and purse were stolen from the beach while she was swimming. Somehow she had the perception that she was in a high trust worthy zone even though she had been doing her doctoral thesis work in a low trust society.

Beautifully said. I feel as if the society that we are living in does have a lot of implicit trust and if I may, I would like to add onto it with a few things.

Trust works in a society when incentives are aligned with trust ie. you trust the society, the society trusts you back and you do the work with these principles and you are rewarded. Even this belief is something that you must trust that the society is fair. This trust creates your beliefs which sets your base-line incentives.

If your society is trustworthy and you are taught to be trustworthy and you see that the rewards are fairly distributed being trustworthy. It creates an incentives to be trustworthy yourself and a society is made by people like you and so everyone else does so too and the society becomes trustworthy and the cycle continues.

You would trust the society because you think your goals are aligned. Both you and society want the same thing.

BUT, the second the average individual works that the society or system is untrustworthy, that the incentives aren't aligned and I can't trust it.

The thing now is that the incentives are so misaligned with the reality of trustworthiness and it has become apparently clear. The incentives have also become unpredictable and questionable sometimes within the society and yet we see society tolerate, dare I say celebrate it sometimes. This makes us question if my personal incentives are aligned with society or not and if I am getting screwed or not by being so trustworthy of society and doing things fairly.

This in turns creates a vicious loop.

As such, fairness, trust and incentives play a very cyclical dependency on each other. You only trust if you feel like its fair and if the incentives prefer you to be fair as well.

I would sadly say that although our society is trending towards unfairness,untrustworthiness and perverse incentives. I do have a glimmer of hope that this too shall pass.

But we have built so many enduring systems that rely on bad apples to function the way the do. See "insurance pricing", "private prisons", and "justice enforcement". In the real world, the ideal number of jails or homeless people is neither zero nor "all of them".

> Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing.

I was taught as a child that most people deep down genuinely want to be "good people". If only I had known what an absolute lie that really truly was, I'd have chosen a very different path for my life. Going out of my way to be a "good person" to the best of my ability was a total waste of a life that could have been spent in the pursuit of wealth and power, which I would have been very good at, had I not foolishly chosen to adhere to a "moral code" that was based on fantasy and naivety and a "reality" that just didn't exist as it was taught in schools, churches, and homes.