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Comment by nathanaldensr | Hacker News Reader

In high-trust societies these things work, yes. Not all societies are high-trust. Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors.

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Funny, how the unreasonable cycle of alternating votes for establishment parties is broken by voting for even more untrustworthy right wing parties.

We all need something like ranked/list voting and incorporate invalid votes into the result so urgently.

I do think people put too much stock in how many things RCV would fix in the US, but I am a big fan of it and it would certainly be a big first step improving representation in this country. Unfortunately, multiple states (all Republican dominated) have already outlawed RCV as an option. So in order to do it you would have to overturn the existing ban as well. It’s ridiculous.

High trust societies generally don't need centralisation to provide positive outcomes.

> Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors.

Citation needed.

Trump rode to the White House pitching that the government is broken/corrupt and as an outsider he would fix it. A significant part of his appeal is that he was a big middle finger to the establishment and current system writ large. This is well studied, documented, and easy to see in our daily lives. How many campaign ads begin with “the system is broken” or “Washington is out of touch”? Nobody ever lost voters for saying the government isn’t doing enough for them and isn’t trustworthy.

You can look at any Gallup or Pew poll or whatever sources you prefer and you will likely see that Americans have been steadily losing trust in their government. It has been in steady decline since the post-war era with some notable brief increases, but they don’t last.

>citation needed

I disagree as it is incredibly easy information to track down. But here you go anyway:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust...

Obviously social trust in the US has declined and Trump benefited from that. But this is not evidence that the primary cause is sociopathic, non-empathetic actors. Theoretically it could also be things such as increased diversity, loss of shared identity, people acting in good faith but failing to adapt to social media.

That’s fair. I focused on the broader question for some reason. I’ll blame it on morning brain.

I’ll ask you this: Do you think Donald Trump is a socially adjusted, empathetic person? A lot of people like him currently because he is a bully.

Edit: I think Nixon is another person whose character deserves scrutiny. His decisions shattered a lot of people‘s perception of the US government.

Go and look around in former high-trust societies where this trust has broken down or is breaking down - my points of reference are the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and to a lesser extent the UK - and you'll get your citations. What you'll probably find is that in 'marginalised areas' people have trust in governmental institutions - those which provide social welfare, healthcare, schools and such - while they have little trust in 'other (groups of) people'. In other words they trust the state but distrust their neighbours, especially those from different ethnic groups. If you look in more well-to-do areas you'll find the opposite: people mostly trust their neighbours but they have lost trust in the higher echelons of the state which in their eyes has been instrumental in the dissolution of their former high-trust society. They'll still mostly trust their local police and fire brigade but they see academia and the social workers and soft-on-crime judicial institutions it produces as part of the problem. Any articles produced by academia which claim to provide proof of the opposite are seen in the light of the severe political bias in those institutions - sociology as a discipline has lost nearly all trust due to this - so citing those only feeds the fire.

Sweden is not a society were trust has broken down. Neither is Germany. Maybe the Netherlands can be argued to have a breaking down of trust. Go look at actual data, and don't rely on racist internet memes to form your arguments.

In neighboring Denmark, where they do gather and publish crime stats by the country of perp's origin, it turns out that some people (like Somalis) have up to 10 times more criminal convictions than the country baseline.

https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1993654135917257214/pho...

One would have to be crazy in order to extend exactly the same trust towards a random Danish Dane vs. a random Somali Dane.

Not every negative statement about non-white people is rooted in racism, and the ugly, fanatical attitude "everyone who has a negative observation about any sort of immigrants must be racist, stupid and evil" is what upended the political spectrum and brought the far right to power in many places.

I said where this trust has broken down _or is breaking down_ - the latter is what is happening in the mentioned countries.

First answer and you directly go to 'racism', that's a rather poor effort. Put some more thought into your replies if you want to be taken seriously.

I know you said or is breaking down. I'm telling you that its only for Netherlands you can argue a drop in trust. I'm sorry that you take the racist label as an insult. But the Sweden has fallen talking point is a racist lie, so don't perpetuate it if you don't want to be called out on it. Again I invite you to look at data on trust, and stop making stuff up.

Why do you think AfD is close to becoming the biggest party in Germany, why is (or was?) Wilders big in the Netherlands, why is Sverigedemokraterna close to becoming the biggest party in Sweden? Do you think suddenly 25% of the population of these countries has turned rabidly racist?

That 'racism' word has lost its meaning due to severe overuse, find another argument. As to finding 'data', that is easy enough if you ask people around you. I live in Sweden and I hear this every day, everywhere, both in the countryside where I live as well as in the more urbanised areas on the west coast where I work and where my daughter goes to school.

If you want to get a bit closer to the actual truth than your knee-jerk 'racism' accusation you should look into the clash of cultures - not races - which lies at the bottom of these problems. Go and speak to people from low-trust societies as well as those from high-trust societies and ask them where they put their trust, how they think about their neighbours - not just the ones in the house next door but also those in other areas.

I moved to the Netherlands a couple years ago and it seems pretty nice, curious what evidence there is trust has dropped.

The government’s appalling failure wrt housing seems like a pretty valid reason for young people to distrust institutions tbh.

It has fallen due to many reasons, some of which are related to migration, many others with no or only tangential relations to it. You already mentioned the 'housing crisis' which is partly related to migration - where asylum seekers with residence permits ('statushouders' [1] in Dutch) get preferential treatment and now stand for 8% of the total, 20% of the housing for 'first time renters' and 78% of the 'first time renters with children' [2]. This is only part of the problem though and not the largest one, that being the fact that there are simply too few housing units (apartments, houses, etc.) available. This in turn is partly due to the fact that it is hard to get permission to build something due to the heavy regulatory burdens and especially the rules around nitrogen emissions ('stikstofregels' [3], nitrogen oxide emissions by diesel engines used in construction put strict limits on what can be built when and where).

Then there are problems like the childcare benefits scandal ('toeslagenaffaire') - again partly related to migration by way of Bulgarian migrant fraud [4] - where the tax department made erroneous claims about benefit fraud without every really acknowledging they were wrong. I have some experience with the Dutch tax authorities making clear mistakes without accepting responsibility, instead they come up with mysterious restitutions which somehow exactly match the erroneously claimed taxes due.

The restrictive and SARS2 unpleasantness hit trust in public institutions hard which caused the universities of Rotterdam and Leiden to publish a report calling the Netherlands a new low-trust society ('de laag-vertrouwensamenleving', [6]). This trend has not reversed, especially among those with 'higher educational levels' [7] who used to have a higher trust in governmental institutions but now slid down to resemble the trust levels seen among those with 'lower educational levels' - this could simply be related to the fact that the left-wing parties favoured by those with 'higher education' did not participate in the government at that time.

I grew up in the Netherlands and lived there until about 25 years ago. I have seen this slide in trust with my own eyes, from the country where I could open the front door by pulling the string which dangled through the letter slot when I cycled home from school at 6 years old to the Fort-Knox-with-cameras now required, from the police officer on his bike greeting the people on his beat to "romeo's" (undercover arrest teams) being accused of inciting riots [8], from nearly the entire village coming out to welcome Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas who brings presents to children at the 5th of December) to those events being cancelled due to the fear of violence and protests, etcetera.

[1] https://www.volkshuisvestingnederland.nl/onderwerpen/huren-e...

[2] https://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/meer-sociale-huurwoning...

[3] https://iplo.nl/regelgeving/regels-voor-activiteiten/technis...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand...

[6] https://www.impactcorona.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Def_-...

[7] https://www.scp.nl/actueel/nieuws/2025/03/04/onder-nederland...

[8] https://reportersonline.nl/politiegeweld-romeos/

Thanks for the sources.

If it helps, my mail slot still has a string…

If there were a string in the mail slot in the house where I grew up it would not end well, unfortunately. Even the mail slot itself is suspect since these have been used by burglars to open unlocked doors (metal wire through the slot, easy), by vandals to throw in fireworks (one house burned down that way), by creeps to pee through it (another house in the same area), by other vandals to put a garden hose in to flood the hallway just for kicks, etc.

This was in Amstelveen, to the south of Amsterdam. Where do you live?

I'm from Holland and I certainly think it has fallen. Not to immigrants but to fascists :( :(

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