Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

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I have always been curious about this, because in my mind systems (however distasteful we may find them) do not arise for no reason. You imagine it reflects some underlying dynamics going on.

I have heard that Arabic / Islamic society is much more family, neighbor, who-you-know oriented versus western society trusting more the rules of some authority, even if not personally known to you. Even for example, mundane things like if you need your plumbing fixed, you don't look up the yellow pages, you ask your friend to refer someone.

Does this lead to "favors" being more acceptable, like as a gift to someone you know for having helped you? Interpreted in a more charitable way, bribes/baksheesh are an expression of gratitude (though now an obligation of doing business)?

You start to think such factors must be ingrained in a people's mentality, because otherwise, why don't we just declare laws that make this sort of practice illegal and everyone is happier?

Some economists / sociologists classify this as low-trust/high-trust societies. In low-trust societies, trust typically does not extend far beyond family and personal connections. There's nothing Islamic about it: low-trust is more or less synonymous with low- to middle income societies, with the majority non-Islamic (China, India, Latin America).

High-trust is largly "Western" (North America, Western/Norhern Europe, Oceania), but also the rich Asian countries (Japan, South Korean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore). The causal relationship between high-trust and high-income is difficult to disentangle, but there's plausibly some form of positive feedback loop at work.

I'm not sure what you have in mind with "arise for no reason". Both historically and presently by population-majority, low-trust society seem the norm and high-trust the exeption.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_socie...

While I mostly agree, I thought Japan is meant to be notorious for corruption? A very different type, of course: not handing in used notes to a tax official, but rather high-level, white-glove type thing. Like, making sure the state turns a blind eye to safety failings at a nuclear plant.

Maybe there is another dimension than low/high trust?

The low/high trust distinction for many writers (e.g., Fukuyama in Trust) isn't primarily about trust in government to be uncorrupt (or even societal trust in government more generally), but rather about a shared consensus about social rules that facilitates reliable, predictable interpersonal cooperation. e.g., A person can trust that if they enter into an agreement with someone else, there's a likelihood that person will perform without a third party outside of the agreement interposing themselves and insisting on a bribe, and if they don't perform, there's a set of neutral rules (e.g., the courts) to resolve the dispute that again don't require exogenous pressures like bribes or influence from powerful family members. Basically less uncertainty, that in turn creates less unnecessary economic friction. Japan satisfies this definition of a high trust society. Trusting that the government can't be bribed is an aspect of the high/low trust concept, but it's not really the core.

> The causal relationship between high-trust and high-income is difficult to disentangle, but there's plausibly some form of positive feedback loop at work.

I've read that the rule of law has something to do with it. E.g.: "Where civil liberties and property rights are secure under a strong rule of law, fewer social resources are up for political grabs and groups have less opportunity to benefit via zero-sum or negative-sum competition against other groups."

https://www.oecd.org/innovation/research/1825662.pdf

And, of course, trust is having a crisis. Witness the Bitcoin crowd, and their distrust of the FED and other political institutions.

There's an interesting treatise, "L'invention de l'homme moderne" by Robert Muchembled, where he details how medieval Europe transitioned from a decentralized and low-trust environment to a centralized and high-trust environment with independent arbiters like police and the courts. For most people, in most regions and most points in time, the idea that a central authority would decide what is right, what you can and cannot charge, how you can and cannot deal with those who harm you, etc., would be completely alien. Central authorities waged wars and asked for taxes and that was pretty much it.

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