Comment by d1zzy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by d1zzy | Hacker News Reader

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When I moved to the US years ago, one of the big differences I noticed (coming from Eastern Europe) was the implicit "trust" people and businesses have of "strangers", people and businesses they have never met before. Where I came from there's an implicit distrust and you have to earn your trust. Now, I thought, this implicit trust is actually great, it definitely makes so many things much easier (don't have to carry or show my ID for so many things where back in Eastern Europe you'd be required to, don't have to show up in person for almost anything, even driving license is sent over mail, etc), people take you at face value, it makes many things friction free. I generally much prefer it over the default distrust culture.

As to the security of such an approach, I always wondered what happens with bad players. Without much investigation I simply assumed that:

1. most people are likely good players

2. those few bad players would get caught by an actually functioning police force and the punishment would be so severe nobody wants to risk it

Naive I know :) I don't know about #1 but #2 is starting to become clear to me it's simply not true. Just look at KitSplit, plenty of bad actors and when that happens nobody seems to be caught. I'm starting to think that people trust strangers implicitly as a matter of comfort (it's more stressful to distrust everyone for sure) and culture (they grew up in it) rather than because they have rational reasons to do so (ex. the law is enforced and violations of said trust are severely punished).

This is the "high/low trust society" distinction; just as there are societies where nobody is on time for meetings and nobody expects them to be, there are some societies where people expect strangers to be very likely dishonest and others where people expect a high baseline honesty.

High trust is a substrate which enables lots of great things to happen. But it's also a resource which can be mined by people for profit, and I worry that a lot of the West is in the process of transitioning into a low-trust society, with a lot of people profiting along the way.

I see that happening, also. I think the internet is to blame--it's not that it makes people less trustworthy, but it provides a much wider net for the untrustworthy to prey upon others.

>implicit "trust" people and businesses have of "strangers", people and businesses they have never met before.

The US is a pretty big and diverse place. Where I'm from it's expected that everyone screws everyone as hard as possible in any business transaction and if you don't do your due diligence then you consent to whatever screwing you receive.

For example you call ten plumbers and all ten of them will give you a "screw you" price then you call up your cousin who calls his in-law who's a GC who gives you a plumber's contact info and a name to drop and then you get a reasonable price that the plumber would offer when they're not trying to screw the other party. Then you use this info to negotiate the other guys down to reasonable prices. And that's just one example.

The state can generally be trusted to not take advantage of you but you still have to be careful. They'll play plenty of tricks that push the limits of plausible deniability in order to get their money.

Even retail transactions are suspect. About the only places I can trust to not rip me off 50% of the time are the big national chains.

It's not quite as bad as some other parts of the world but you can't enter into any business transaction without doing your due diligence. If you do you'll get burned pretty often.

Even in random day to day interactions with other people you don't trust people unless you know them or there's some alignment of interests that keeps them from screwing you.

And no, I don't come from some "backwards" rural area. I'm speaking about a relatively well off part of the northeast.

I grew up in Connecticut, and as I was reading this I had a feeling you were describing the Northeast!

I've lived and done business in New England, N. California, the Midwest and Southeast, and the attitude you described is widespread. (Though by no means practiced by everyone.)

The Southeast in fact has been the worst IME, because underhanded practices come along with a big helping of Southern "niceness", and often a lower level of competence.

The haggling/list-price distinction is also a headache, because it varies both regionally and by both business-vertical and individual.

In that case you probably want to just go with the plumber your inlaw recommended. Would kind of be awkward to explain that you wasted their recommended plumbers time only to save a few bucks with some rando from the white pages.

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