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Do You Trust Your Fellow Citizens?

Zardnaar

Deity
Joined
Nov 16, 2003
Messages
21,372
Location
Dunedin, New Zealand
Few scenarios here.

You go camping. There's a communal kitchen, 2 refrigerators and a deep freezer. Woukd you put booze in the fridge to keep ot cool. How about steak and chicken in the freezer? Unsecured anyone can help themselves. There's a sign up with the price.

You produce something in a rural area. Might be meat, vegetables, fruit, fertilizer (bags of poo). You decide to sell it via honesty box. There's a box money can be dropped in and the goods are on a table or something
Help yourself drop cash in the box. People can steal the food orbreak the cash box.

Similar to previous one. Cashbox, honey. Vegetables, fruit etc but it's in your neighborhood. 5 minute walk from your house.
 
Given that some people in my apartment building are getting their Amazon parcels stolen and we have a security door here (only people with keycards can get in and everyone else has to be buzzed in), it's obviously a resident doing the thefts. So if people would grab an Amazon box from a neighbor, then no, I wouldn't trust people here with other stuff.
 
Depends on circumstances.

I trust people to be as honest as they can afford to be.

Below the surface I think most people are weak and desperate but for the average person in the 1st world it's more stress than it's worth to steal/fight.

I trust people with small stuff and don't tempt them with big stuff.
 
100% depends on the people and the community. Small town? Honesty box might work fine. Big city apartment complex? Fat chance. Saw a dude steal my neighbor's Amazon package last week, broad daylight. Some folks have zero moral compass when they think no one's watching.
 
I keep my doors locked in the drive-through, that's how much I trust the people in the town I live in.
 
No. Sadly.
 
More than you all seem to. Or but less than a year ago. There's an influx from a new subdivision and there are now far more little suburbanite colonists breaking into cars and sneering at people who wave to them.

Trust, like the stars of the sky, will disappear with them. Blotted out by thier... culture.
 
More than you all seem to. Or but less than a year ago. There's an influx from a new subdivision and there are now far more little suburbanite colonists breaking into cars and sneering at people who wave to them.
I trust people, condemn the paranoia as petty and unhealthy, and I've actually had things taken from me. It means more that we lose trust than it does I lose a beat to horsehockey tenspeed.

I'm not with you on waving, though. I hate that. Everybody does it here, but I don't know them, nor can I reasonably expect to have much interaction with them in future, and it's a straining emotionally draining thing to muster fake friendly every 30 yards.

I'd rather have people be real even if they shun waving. Fake friendly prevents society from seeing where it's really at, which slows reevaluation.
 
I think waving (in circumstances like that) is grounded precisely on the fact that you don't know the person. It's a way of signaling, "My default position toward a person I don't know is friendliness." It does come at the cost of everyone having to wave every 30 yards, but where it is operative, I do not think it is fake.
 
I trust people, condemn the paranoia as petty and unhealthy, and I've actually had things taken from me. It means more that we lose trust than it does I lose a beat to horsehocky tenspeed.

I'm not with you on waving, though. I hate that. Everybody does it here, but I don't know them, nor can I reasonably expect to have much interaction with them in future, and it's a straining emotionally draining thing to muster fake friendly every 30 yards.

I'd rather have people be real even if they shun waving. Fake friendly prevents society from seeing where it's really at, which slows reevaluation.
It's like anything else, you do it till it's real. Same people day after day. Watch thier kids grow as thier walking dogs get old. But they won't have it be real. Thier antisocial stench is a feature, not a bug. Infectious.
 
I think waving (in circumstances like that) is grounded precisely on the fact that you don't know the person. It's a way of signaling, "My default position toward a person I don't know is friendliness." It does come at the cost of everyone having to wave every 30 yards, but where it is operative, I do not think it is fake.
I believe it to be vestigial.

There was a time when a farmer saw his crops fail and his neighbor got him through the winter. The favor would be repaid.

Could you imagine asking anyone who waves at you for the money to get you through the rest of the month? Such things used to be done, but this is well beyond what could be reasonably expected today. You'd be thought a loon to even ask.

It's therefore a holdover: without meaningful altruism, it is useless. The important thing is that our communities have lost that altruism, and being left with the impression "people are so nice here" detracts from that and keeps society closer to the place we presently are: everybody is miserable, but the superficialities are so omnipresent that nobody can really honestly evaluate just how empty it all is.
 
It's like anything else, you do it till it's real. Same people day after day. Watch thier kids grow as thier walking dogs get old. But they won't have it be real. Thier antisocial stench is a feature, not a bug. Infectious.
D'oh. Slipped this post in on me.

I was once two weeks into a new job, pay was late. I gave a dude the 800$ to buy the propane to heat his house(and also paid for the chips he ate off the shelf figuring he'd pay up at closing, which woulda lost him his job)

I believe those are the things that form trust: real altruism must be shown at some point, with the extender vulnerable to betrayal, or it doesn't end up forming. Efforts to restore it should focus on that.
 
If i wave at you, I'm not asking you for money.
 
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Could you imagine asking anyone who waves at you for the money to get you through the rest of the month?
No. I don't think it means anything more than, "If we both got out of our car right now, I would start off with a friendly disposition toward you rather than neutral or hostile. You would have to earn a less favorable starting disposition by your own surliness or hostility."

Kind of a treasure in the primed-for-hostility world we live in. Glad Farm Boy has enjoyed some of it.
 
Hate begets hate. The ticky tacky empire strikes back.
 
An honesty box just sounds like a dumb idea.

But I'm not a particular fan of the whole "pay what you want" in general. As I think you're goading people into basically giving charity, without saying that that's what it is, when most aren't going to be receptive to that and simply steal [I say that versus "pay less than what it actually costs to make"].

But see there's this thing called "free samples" which piques people's interest in what you're doing. If you offer that and they like it, you could make them reliable customers and keep them coming back.
 
Sweet corn stands list a price and expect you to pay it?
 
The honesty boxes I've used have had a posted price. Farmer just produces more of something than he can sell otherwise, but less than makes sense for him to man a booth. If people are honest, it's a win-win.

THE. BEST. EGGS. I'VE. EVER. HAD.
 
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