But what came first? The high-trust people or the high-trust society? And how do high-trust societies develop? Well these are questions academics can study. But for the rest of us, does it matter? What is important for most of us, is the fact that societies are simply an aggregation of their individual members.
I do not want to get into the various definitions of high-trust and low-trust societies. You can find plenty of that for yourself. Rather, what I want to focus on is this: The reason you have a low-trust society is because you have a large population of low integrity people. Are there exceptions? Of course. But there are enough low integrity people that one cannot expect routine, everyday trust. You must assume that everyone you meet, and every interaction you have, will lack integrity. You must assume that the people around you are untrustworthy. And the fact is, many of them are.
And I will go further. Each individual member of this group has a choice. They each individually choose to either act with integrity or without integrity. That is to say that even in a low-trust society, individuals still possess agency. There is no physical or mystical compulsion that forces individuals to be dishonest. No, this they each choose for themselves.
This is not a societal choice. Individuals lack integrity. Individuals choose to be dishonest. Make any excuse you like, but this is an individual choice. And if you have enough of them, your society will be low trust. And rightfully so.
Now, notice that most low-trust societies happen to be found in the third world. Is it the case that countries are low-trust because they are poor? Or are countries poor because they are low trust? It is certainly a huge cultural factor. The cost of business, and cooperation more generally, is just too high to compete with high-trust societies.
In a low-trust society, you are forced to spend more and operate less efficiently in order to overcome trust issues. You will tend to make poor hiring decisions, likely preferring family hires over the possibly best hires. Contracts lack the presumption of good faith that you find in high-trust societies. People often conduct business in-person for the same reasons. High and low value scams are epidemic. And of course, these societies are corrupt.
As I have pointed out before, most people do not understand corruption. It is not something that you find exclusively at elite levels; the top of government or business. Yes, corruption goes all the way to the top. But it also goes all the way to the bottom. Corruption is a cultural failing across the board.
And it all comes down to individual choices. And a pervasive lack of individual integrity.
The three traits. I have noticed that high integrity does not operate in a vacuum. It is directly, if not perfectly, correlated with hard work and intelligence. If you doubt this assertion, let us consider the inverse. A lack of integrity almost perfectly correlates with laziness and a lack of intelligence.
Let's start with laziness. If you are lazy, you are always looking for shortcuts, and more generally, to avoid effort or extra effort. One obvious way to achieve this goal is dishonesty. And while I know that there are some smart but lazy people, most lazy and dishonest people are also not very smart. Intelligence requires effort.
So you have hardworking, high integrity, intelligent people and you have lazy, low integrity, less intelligent people. And I think this is true everywhere. It is just a question of percentages.
But what about all the good people in these low-trust societies? The hardworking, high integrity, intelligent types, however many or few there may be. Well in my experience, they are forced to adapt to the low integrity world around them. They learn that the easiest path is careful interaction, without accusation. It does little good to hold low integrity people accountable when there are so many of them across every aspect of society. So they pay the high cost of business and often do without justice.
Notice here, that at least in the short term, the low integrity type does not pay the higher cost, but in fact pays an artificially low cost. This perverse incentive keeps the number of low integrity individuals high; and incentivizes others to set aside their own integrity. We will come back to the long term below.
And high integrity types have learned the value of silence. Why? Consider how the low integrity types view the high integrity types. First of course as marks and suckers to be taken advantage of. The low integrity types would never consider the high integrity types to be of superior intellect. That idea never crosses their third-rate minds. Low integrity types usually believe that they are smarter than everyone else. And always believe that they are smarter than they actually are.
So the first reaction that the low integrity type has about a high integrity type is one of superiority. I know something that they don't; I know the shortcuts; let me take advantage of this naive fool. But when the intelligence of the high integrity type prevails, the reaction of the low integrity type is one of resentment.
Yes, in time low integrity people come to resent high integrity people. This is inevitable. But there is a reason beyond intelligence envy. The lazy, low integrity, stupid person does not want to believe that the people who are hardworking, high integrity, and smart hold some type of advantage over their own dodgy ways. That would mean that they are not superior, but rather are actually inferior. And who wants to think that? That is to say, very few people are going to come to that conclusion.
So the low integrity types work to undermine the high integrity types. They even have a name for it: Crab mentality. They want the high integrity types to get down in the muck with them and live as they do. This attitude is pervasive in low trust societies.
Now of course in the end, high integrity people, just like high-trust societies, prevail. But the low integrity types are rarely smart enough to actually learn from their mistakes. So they repeat them endlessly, and then wonder why they never seem to get ahead. No, what I need is more shortcuts and I will get what I deserve.
Low-trust societies find it almost impossible to break this cycle.
Now one note on high-trust societies. However they developed, they have one vulnerability. If they allow enough low integrity people from low-trust societies in, they will, by necessity, lose their high-trust culture. This is a purely voluntary loss. Japan seems to understand this. Most western countries do not.