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Comment by williamtrask | Hacker News Reader

A “zero-trust society” seems like a dangerous phrase to advocate. Society exists because of trust in institutions.

> A "zero-trust society" seems like a dangerous phrase to advocate.

Thatcher and Reagan were a long way ahead there. They trusted institutions so little, particularly government, that they declared society doesn't exist. We've been trying to rebuild "society" since the 1980s.

Sadly the restoration our very human institutions, if it can be done at all, may only occur after all the painful lessons have been learned from thinking we can install crypto-cybernetic overlords as our servants.

Actually its a spectrum, there are high trust and low trust societies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404IeUzGNZ4

I agree with you, but no society functions at the “0” end of that spectrum. That’s anarchy. Even Mad Max / Book of Eli level dystopia still had nonzero trust in local warlords as institutions.

The example given of a high trust society is Finland. The example given of a low trust society is Afghanistan. [1] Which would you rather live in?

https://theconversation.com/trusting-societies-are-overall-h...

Finland is not one high trust society. Its two. They almost had a civil war back then when the sovjets nearly invaded and society split in two high trust societies (left - stalin collaborateurs) and right (finland patriots). There are still towns were the sides do not shop in the same super market.

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