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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

I don't think a single parameter like that makes it "definitely" low-trust.

In Austria, people are required to deposit money to borrow a grocery cart while shopping for food. Not so anywhere I've been in the US -- ergo Austria is low-trust and US is high-trust? I think not.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travelbuzz/2004272-euro-coin...

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The US has those, Aldi uses them. But isn't this because they don't have cart boys to bring the carts from corals throughout the parking lot back to the front of the store? It's just a different model of cart management, not indicative of trust or lack thereof. If somebody wanted to steal a cart, that quarter is a trivial price for it. It's not an anti-theft measure, just a little thing to encourage honest people to walk slightly further than normal.

Here's a rule of thumb I use to judge if a community is high trust or not. If I leave my bicycle unlocked and it gets stolen, will others be surprised or will they call me a moron for trusting other people? Obviously NYC is low trust, I would be mocked mercilessly if my unlocked bike got stolen there.

My bar for low-trust is 'Should I expect to have to bribe public and private officials to get them to perform their duties, most of the time'?

The US is relatively high trust in this space. And I don't know of many countries that will pass the bike test. Certainly, nowhere in Europe would.

Maybe we could try a different test - how afraid is the society of itself. Count how often you see cops, how well-armed they are, etc...

For me the test is: if possible, would an individual skip paying the ticket for a public transport if they know almost nobody will check?

It's so trivial and yet it shows how much the society cares about its own systems functioning properly or not.

That's a better test. There are a lot of places with 95%+ fare compliance where I wouldn't leave my bike unlocked for an instant.

It only takes one asshole out of thousands to steal a bike, and every society has at least one asshole.

Any example?

Also high trust != absolutely no crime ever

It's the difference between getting your bike stolen because of a random asshole and knowing your bike will be stolen by someone (also arguably an asshole).

> Any example?

Literally any city with good fare compliance. If it's got enough people in it to have a transit network, it's got enough bike thieves in it to steal your bike.

> It's the difference between getting your bike stolen because of a random asshole and knowing your bike will be stolen by someone (also arguably an asshole).

That's just a product of population density. If you live in the middle of nowhere, with 5 people total in a 15-mile radius, it's highly unlikely someone's going to steal your bike.

If you leave your bike on Main Street, where thousands of people walk by every hour, all it takes is one in a thousand.

Aldi, the German grocery chain infecting our High Trust Society with their Low Trust Germanicism?

> It's not an anti-theft measure, just a little thing to encourage honest people to walk slightly further than normal.

... because they can't be trusted to do it without the deposit...

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