How to build a high-trust society

Leucosticte

Well-known member
Messages
916
#1
One theory about building a high-trust society is that there needs to be some homogeneity; e.g. you should live with the rest of your clan, so that your neighbors are basically your cousins, and if they were to betray you, they'd be betraying their own family. The blood ties will help promote good behavior, since blood is thicker than water.

I would also say, there needs to be at least some slight incentive for good behavior. Maybe we can rely 50% on incentives, and 50% on altruism, or maybe even 10% on incentives and 90% on altruism. But there needs to be, e.g., some slight chance that a person will get caught and shamed or otherwise punished if they behave badly. E.g., if your neighbor sees your child being kidnapped in broad daylight and does nothing, they should probably be shamed for that. The problem is, in today's world, where we have the Internet, shaming can go way overboard and mean that someone feels like they can't even get a job anywhere because they have a bad history showing up in search results. So, I don't know what the answer to that is. There needs to be some balance between shame and forgiveness.

Maybe it shouldn't even need to be shame that's used to provide good incentives, but there should at least be society's moral support on the side of victims who are trying to protect their rights. For example, when I got accused of rape and hit with a restraining order, the alleged victim had the help of "victim advocates" but I had no advocate on my side. My side was not even represented at all; there were only empty chairs at the defense table because I didn't have a right to a court-appointed lawyer and, being jobless, I couldn't afford to travel 1,651 miles and stay overnight there, etc., to defend myself in court. When people are disarmed like this from fighting back or even defending themselves against false allegations, it encourages abuse of the system. I say "disarmed" because in a system that's set up properly, either the case should be tried in the jurisdiction where the offensive behavior allegedly occurred (e.g. in my home state, not in the state where the alleged victim moved to after she left), or the defendant should have the right to appear by videoconferencing or something.

The burden of proof is also a factor in building a high-trust society. If women's allegations of abuse are taken at face value and given the benefit of the doubt, even when those allegations aren't really all that credible, then it's hard to trust that women aren't going to try to fuck us over through false allegations when they have the opportunity and incentive, because there's no punishment for lying at all. They needs to be some slight incentive to behave well, just to give people that slight nudge they need to do the right thing.
 
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fschmidt

New member
Messages
3
#2
This kind of speculation is mental masturbation. To know what works, look at the real world - ideally what works today but at least what has worked in history. Pushing genetic/racial homogeneity has never worked. Pushing cultural and religious homogeneity works. If you want to see this in action visit a conservative Mennonite church.
 
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