The first theory is diversity, but trust here doesn’t seem to correspond to diversity at all—Norway and Austria are homogenous and on opposite ends. Canada and Belgium are diverse and on opposite ends.
As for other theories, socialist countries are also on both top (Scandinavia) and bottom (Austria, France). Catholic countries seem to be lower than Protestant countries, but Ireland is pretty high, and it might just be Scandinavia making this impression.
So I’m not really sure what trust correlates much with.
socialist countries...Scandinavia...Austria, France
Which countries on that list do you call not socialist? English-speaking ones? Switzerland?
Where can we get objective information about whether people are trusting or trust-worthy, rather than what they say? The Japanese claim to be less trusting than Americans, but they are trustworthy with wallets, if not with umbrellas and bicycles.
and the angry dude argues that Americans should not trust institutions which is completely different from whether they do trust people, which is the topic of the survey and the slashdot entry.
US is higher than most of non-Northern Europe when it comes to trust.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_tru_peo-lifestyle-trust-people
The first theory is diversity, but trust here doesn’t seem to correspond to diversity at all—Norway and Austria are homogenous and on opposite ends. Canada and Belgium are diverse and on opposite ends.
As for other theories, socialist countries are also on both top (Scandinavia) and bottom (Austria, France). Catholic countries seem to be lower than Protestant countries, but Ireland is pretty high, and it might just be Scandinavia making this impression.
So I’m not really sure what trust correlates much with.
Which countries on that list do you call not socialist? English-speaking ones? Switzerland?
Where can we get objective information about whether people are trusting or trust-worthy, rather than what they say? The Japanese claim to be less trusting than Americans, but they are trustworthy with wallets, if not with umbrellas and bicycles.
and the angry dude argues that Americans should not trust institutions which is completely different from whether they do trust people, which is the topic of the survey and the slashdot entry.
US, Japan, and Switzerland seem less socialist than Scandinavia, Austria, and France by standard measures, right?
Questionnaire is a proxy measure, but it’s better proxy than some random blog rant.
Here are some obvious things that might reasonably correlate with trust, but don’t seem to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality