I think this conflates high trust in the sense of economics (that you won’t be cheated) with high trust in the sense of not being emotionally (or whatever) betrayed. In the sense of economical trust it’s obviously correlated—every now and then I’m struck with wonder at e.g. self checkout or in general that you can pick up a bunch of products and it’s assumed you’ll pay for them. This is really valuable and often unappreciated. Credit cards are both terrifying and wonderful—you use a bit of plastic to say that at some point you’ll give it back and pretty much everyone takes you at your word. To the point that there are places that prefer this to hard cash! This is amazing! If someone does take your money, you let the bank know and they basically just give it back to you? How does this still work?!
That being said, I think Duncan is pointing at something else. Or maybe an extension? That if you can have this kind of trust in other areas, the equivalent of credit cards becomes possible. But by default this doesn’t happen. In places where you have to continuously be on guard against people cheating/stealing from you, you have to invest a lot of resources in mitigating the downsides of this happening. When you can safely assume no one will steal from you, those resources can go to more productive areas. This generalizes.
I think this conflates high trust in the sense of economics (that you won’t be cheated) with high trust in the sense of not being emotionally (or whatever) betrayed. In the sense of economical trust it’s obviously correlated—every now and then I’m struck with wonder at e.g. self checkout or in general that you can pick up a bunch of products and it’s assumed you’ll pay for them. This is really valuable and often unappreciated. Credit cards are both terrifying and wonderful—you use a bit of plastic to say that at some point you’ll give it back and pretty much everyone takes you at your word. To the point that there are places that prefer this to hard cash! This is amazing! If someone does take your money, you let the bank know and they basically just give it back to you? How does this still work?!
That being said, I think Duncan is pointing at something else. Or maybe an extension? That if you can have this kind of trust in other areas, the equivalent of credit cards becomes possible. But by default this doesn’t happen. In places where you have to continuously be on guard against people cheating/stealing from you, you have to invest a lot of resources in mitigating the downsides of this happening. When you can safely assume no one will steal from you, those resources can go to more productive areas. This generalizes.