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Comment by BulgarianIdiot | Hacker News Reader

Society is visibly decomposing before our eyes. You can tell because trust no longer exists. And those who trust, get burned, because they're taken advantage of. The issue is without trust, society does not exist.

What's coming is frankly scary to me.

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I think it depends on the country. I'm from Ireland and live in Vietnam. Both of these countries are doing ok. Of course they are not perfect, some things improve and some get worse just as they ever did.

But visibly decomposing? No. We're doing ok, as is much of the world, especially considering that we're at the tail end of a pandemic that massively disrupted the social order. I think we're doing pretty well when I consider that, in fact.

Some other countries - the US, Brazil, Hungary and of course Russia, are not doing so well right now. But they are not the entire world.

The problem is that we're highly interconnected. Even when global trade suffers, we're connected through the Internet. So the sentiments flow and spread globally. I agree some countries may be doing better, but for them to keep doing better they'd have to be paradoxically culturally isolated, and yet economically open (because production costs would skyrocket otherwise), and the latter almost implies Internet these days, which on its own turn implies cultural exchange.

It's messy.

Maybe a big part of the issue is not initially that there's no trust, but the sentiment being spread that you'll get screwed if you trust people. It seems like the cheapest way to really undermine a society if you were so inclined, especially in our age.

Most people I meet are trustworthy but on Facebook I get the message, from my own neighbors, that it's dangerous to even go outside.

Think about how trust is built. If you really believe it's something precious (I do), think about what your part is in creating more or less of it.

I admit, it's often very hard to take the first step, to be willing to look like the naive sucker, or to try to see the humanity in someone who's angry and, I guess, often scared just like me.

It's pretty easy to not say things like "society is falling apart", "you can't trust anyone these days", and things like that though. At least out loud. Then it seems like it's easier to see signs of the opposite being true.

I don't see it. There have always been scams. It seems to me it's a lot better now than 100ish years ago when every other product was some shit someone made up. At least now there are agencies looking after food and drug safety and heaps of information allowing self research.

Trust has always been an issue too. I don't think you could ever blindly trust everyone. I generally trust a random person I meet will be telling truths as they understand the world, but I wouldn't rely on them. However, crime is historically low, the chance of being assaulted, mugged etc is lower than it has been, so it seems you can trust your fellow person more now.

There are community and social issues. But I know my neighbours pretty well, if they needed help I'd be there, they would be there for us and have been.

edit: I don't live in the US but I have done in the past and I generally found Americans as or more helpful and friendly neighbours, friends and colleagues.

I think trust still exists among individuals and in social groups. But yeah trusting others on the Internet makes no sense. I think we‘ll look back at the web2 era and say it was naive to trust in a www user‘s good faith actions and assume western morals. The Internet is global, heterogen and trust cannot exist among individuals unless one or more parties have a lot of skin in the game e.g. through identity.

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