Peter Turchin is a great source on how societies move from high-trust to low-trust over time. One thing he points out is that it’s an oscillation - when facing an external danger (the Gauls and Carthaginians with Rome, the Persians with Greece, the Axis with the West), a society bands together. Then, when the threat is gone, the society amasses a huge amount of social capital, which people start competing over. This competition becomes fiercer and fiercer, until the society becomes weak and another external threat arises. However, as a society goes through multiple iterations of this cycle, the amount of solidarity on the whole deteriorates. He points out Peninsular Italy as a perfect example - once a high-trust, high-solidarity society evolved, over two millennia, into a black hole of trust.

America is on the downswing of such an oscillation, because people have more or less lost faith in the social contract they were given. Ask yourself, as an American, how true these statements are:

A company values the work you do and will compensate you fairly for it.

You can trust a single company to do this for the entirety of your career.

If you’re fired or laid off, it’s because you didn’t provide enough value for the company.

Our financial elites have your best interests at heart. They are making it so that your financial life will have the best possible outcome.

Our political elites are doing everything they can to preserve the system of government that gives you the freedom you need to thrive, and to spread freedom throughout the world.

Does this sound like the truth? Or is it that companies use people and throw them away, that our financial elites have plundered our society while leaving hapless working people impoverished, and that our political elites are doing everything they can to deprive us of our freedoms while leeching off a global empire that destabilizes and destroys entire nations?

America is not at the level of Brazil (a hyper-low-trust society, where I happen to live). True low-trust societies bleed human capital because people do not trust one another on a personal level - how do I know you won’t steal my bike, how do I know you’ll pay me, how do I know you’re not running a scam, how do I know this letter I send will arrive, and if I employ you can I rely on you to do your job rather than goof off? If people cannot trust one another in this basic sense, they can’t build functional organizations, they can’t build a working system of credit, and a modern economy cannot exist. Brazil’s recent recession is a perfect example - their growth depended on a Chinese-driven commodity boom. When that ended, what was left was mostly mediocre companies that couldn’t compete internationally.

Low trust societies seem to evolve in two ways. Either they have gone through successive disappointments over centuries - Italy, China, the Middle East - and have absorbed the lessons. Or, they begin as low-trust societies because of the political regime imposed on them - I’m thinking of Russia, which had Czarism from almost the very beginning, or Brazil, which began as a giant slave plantation.

America is neither of these. It does place an abnormally high degree of trust in individuals because our macro-disappointments haven’t yet seeped into our personal behavior. It is still one of the best places to start a business, to make money, to work hard and be rewarded, and to put your money somewhere and be sure it will be there when you come back. Trains run on time, mail is delivered, companies are started efficiently, you don’t have to bribe government officials to do their job, and we have a legal system where people can resolve their disputes. It’s not as good as it used to be, but it’s still better than a lot of the world.

We still have a few more oscillations to go before we reach the state of a truly low-trust society. We’re not Scandinavia or Canada, but we’re not Russia or China either.

https://www.quora.com/Is-the-US-transitioning-into-a-low-trust-society

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3997589&forum_id=2#36211557)

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-diversity.1.6986248.html

LA times too http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-rodriguez13aug13-column,amp.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3997589&forum_id=2#36211565)

The outsiders are not bad people. To some extent they aren't even there by choice. They can integrate and become great friends with the natives. But those are individual relationships and are not the rule, and you'll never control the incipient reaction of a populace.

It's maddening that these logical statements on the downside of diversity--nay, the existential threat of diversity--are dismissed as mere bigotry, hatred. Bigotry and hatred are population-level, ingroup reactions to the threat of diversity to their communities and way of life. They're manifestations of opposition to government representatives prioritizing economics (and their own wallets) over civilization. GOD FORBID someone might favor their community and way of life over the coffers of fat cats. Those monsters, those racists!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3997589&forum_id=2#36211575)

Your bowling team can still be as racist as it wants to be.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3997589&forum_id=2#36420496)

It's gone now.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3997589&forum_id=2#36222715)

And while some college students were mature enough to appreciate the change in culture in NY after 911, I dont think high school students count. Teenagers dont know shit, much less have perspective for a before-and-after shift like that

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3997589&forum_id=2#36420596)