What the article doesn't mention but the store's website https://tot-go12.com/ does is that you need to pass through facial recognition to enter the store and there are multiple cameras tracking whether you try to leave without paying. (Maybe like Amazon Checkout where there's humans continuously monitoring the video feed.)
"High trust society" or not, you need some minimum level of security to avoid becoming a honeypot for all the less-trustworthy individuals that exist in any society. Maybe the highest trust here is in the police actually showing up and doing something about it when they report a theft.
There are plenty of unmanned frozen food shops (gyoza etc.) with one CCTV. On the rare occasion that someone steals food, it is taken seriously and investigated.
People have been arrested here for grabbing a medium combini coffee cup and using it to serve a large coffee.
> Studies show that the most important thing about criminal punishment is certainty of being caught and prosecuted.
This might lead someone to wrongly conclude that high order societies are a matter of policing. It's not. It's a matter of culture. Japan doesn't have more cops per citizen than your average 1st world country. But they do have a culture that deeply condemns crime and values honor.
They also have a hostage justice system with a 95%+ conviction rate, in which people can effectively be detained indefinitely (years) without trial as prosecutors hold out for confessions. In a very real sense, we started the United States of America specifically to avoid that kind of system. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
I agree, but I’d submit that the way the criminal justice system works reinforces culture. Swiftly catching and consistently punishing law breakers helps reinforce the social norms against crime.
I know this is besides the point, incredibly petty and borderline psychotic, but... if you can fill your medium cup with the amount of a large one, wouldn't that mean that the store is the one cheating on you? The way this is playing in my head is: I grab the medium cup, try to outsmart the universe and pour a large into it, coffee overflows in my hand, and I watch justice being served as my hand gets burn and I cannot scream because that would denounce my scam.
> the police actually showing up and doing something about it when they report a theft.
That and this whole concept can only happen in places with low criminality. In Thailand I occasionally find small shops that have a CCTV and that's it (but the total value of goods on display likely does not exceed $100)
I wonder what does it take to get a society to have low criminality. IIUC Japan wasn't always this way. Could other societies become high trust? Singapore is. It wasn't always
If self-checkout stores[0] are a measure of being such a place: Ageing of society. I've read last year's statistics about my country's criminality and two things stand out:
1. It's half what it was 20 years ago.
2. The largest group of perpetrators are people in their mid 30s, not 17-20yo like it was two decades ago and they focus on online fraud, not actually going places to commit crimes.
[0] Specifically corner shops with a self-checkout machine and just one person behind the non-self checkout counter who wouldn't be able to react anyway should anyone leave with the goods.
Or just the insurers paying up because the police provided a crime number.
This is how it works in the U.K. - everyone has cctv, not because it prevents theft or allows the police to investigate, but rather because it allows you insurance coverage for any losses.
If insurance became expensive enough (and logically the price must continue to rise as claims increase) then there will be a financial advantage for companies to design their shops not to need such insurance
> you need to pass through facial recognition to enter the store and there are multiple cameras tracking whether you try to leave without paying.
Totally irrelevant point.
Walk into any supermarket in a Western country these days.
The place is crawling in CCTV.
The packets of steak and other "expensive" stuff have RFID anti-theft tags on them.
The self-service checkouts have close-up CCTV and anti-theft weight comparison systems.
Many even employ security contractors to stand by the door.
Does it prevent thefts ?
Does it hell. The scumbag steals the goods and says F** Y** to the security guard on the way out. By the time the police get there (if they can even be bothered to turn up for such a minor crime) its too late.
So yes, I am with the original blog. CCTV or not, the sort of thing shown in the blog could only happen in Japan.
It’s because, in the U.S., nobody will bother to look at the CCTV to catch the perpetrator. Or even if they do, the court will release them because it’s a non-violent offense. The most important deterrent in criminal justice is the certainty that conduct will be punished.
That's wonderful, but it's not a big surprise for me.
When in Tokyo I encountered vending machines on a public street (the Ginza) that dispensed bottles of whiskey—Suntory if I recall—that operated 24 hours a day. If you wanted a drink at 3AM you could get it.
Where I am that vending machine would be vandalized overnight and the owner of such an appliance shop would be broke and out of business the next day.
Shame really.
Edit: A Westerner but longtime resident of Japan told me when I was working there of a hotel robbery where an American tourist had valuables and jewelry worth a substantial sum taken from her hotel room. The robbery was big enough to make the newspapers which led to the return of the jewelry. The thief after seeing the news story returned them with a message to the effect "Sorry, I wouldn't have stolen them if I'd known you were a visiting tourist".
Perhaps the story is apocryphal but it and other stories such as if you lose your wallet there's good chance it'll be returned complete with cash—is testament to the honesty of Japanese people.
While visiting Japan last year, I have witnessed a scene when one of my companions forgot his wallet, which also contained an expensive smartphone, in a train, when we have changed quickly the trains, and someone from the other train ran really, really fast, to catch us in the other train and give the forgotten wallet to its owner.
Than he ran equally fast to his train, which was ready to leave. Had he not run so fast while returning the wallet to its owner, he would have lost his train. Therefore, doing a good deed had required quite an effort for that Japanese, but this had not dissuaded him.
Those vending machines are supposed to check ID but I've never seen one do (I think cigarette machines do). They just turn off at night and apparently that's enough to stop children from using them.
It's quite some time since I've been there but I can't remember an ID system being in place. I didn't have to produce an ID and usually I selected non-alcoholic drinks. However, that was before the proliferation of smartphones, so back then it is likely there was no ID checking.
As a nonsmoker, I can't speak about cigarette machines, likely there was no ID on them too.
Nowadays, with smartphones etc. checking IDs is comparatively easy but I can't think how it would have been done back then.
Right, that's cleared things up. Both the Taspo/Tobacco Card and vending machine capability (cash or credit, top up card, etc.) weren't available when I was there last. I'd reckon the strict ID requirements for Taspo card must have been quite a cultural shock. My recollection was that back then tobacco products were much more freely available than where I was living.
You still see little islands of high trust in the US. I walked out of an HEB the other day and there were several pickup trucks idling in the parking lot with nobody inside of them. You could open the door and drive off with zero effort if you could find the insanity to do so. I often dont bother to lock my doors at home. The Walmart here doesn't hassle you upon exiting. The local community feels incredibly safe. Drive 20 miles south and you'll find a totally different universe.
While driving through upstate New York on a camping trip I found a maple syrup shop run on the honor system. Leave the money in an unlocked box. It was shocking. I bought a gallon.
I had the same experience in upstate NY. So many little boutique country stores with craft and art tables outside that just had venmo signs next to the crafts. My wife bought a few items and we were pleasantly surprised to see how many public purchases were made to that venmo account. And it wasn't super cheap junk/stuff either.
We have quite a few road side stalls like this around where I live in NZ, Honey, eggs, swedes are a common one. You hear of the odd theft from them every now and then but for the most part it seems to work well.
If you've been to the rural USA you'd know it's just high-trust (and the middle of nowhere). They're pretty common for low-value things like corn and farm produce; but I've seen syrup and honey, too.
There might be a camera but since there's usually no power, it'd have to be some sort of trail/game/deer cam. What would you do with the result besides some vigilante frontier justice? No cop anywhere but daytime children's TV is going to investigate the Case of the Stolen Syrup.
We once went to Florida and saw some open orange farms. We wanted to buy some, but there was nobody in sight - we got very confused until we saw a box which said "$X a bag"; there was a sack of bags nearby. My mind was blown.
After traveling for years, I often wonder how various cultures end up high or low trust. Wealth or financial inequality doesn't seem to be the main driving factor, despite seeming an obvious cause. Racial and ethnic homogeneity doesn't always explain it either.
Destruction of traditional culture by things like colonialism seems to be an important factor.
I'm not that familiar with them, but my guess would be yes, at least for hunter-gatherers. I would think that bad behavior would get you kicked out of the community and lead to likely death.
The larger ancient cities that farmed would be more interesting, especially because today Latin America is one of the lowest trust regions of the world.
I didn't suggest it was the only factor.
I guess if you want a single explanation, any significant immigration or influence from a vastly different culture will likely lead to a lower trust society.
If there are consequences to bad behavior which results in real, felt, shame, then society will self-police to whatever values it holds. However, there can be downsides; for instance a lack of out-of-the-box thinking and individuality.
>for instance a lack of out-of-the-box thinking and individuality.
Overrated. There's close to 0% of it going on in "low trust societies" anyway. It's not like the average social media zombie in the west is anywhere near an "out of the box" thinker...
They leave out more wood than a camper would even think to take because they only need one bundle every day or two. The sort of person who would need to steal a whole season's worth of wood is less likely to have the means to transport it all, and if they're so desperate that they'd go to the trouble then the Christian thing to do would be to let them have it.
Gillette razors on the other hand, are expensive to stock for their size, and easy to steal because of their size.
I’d wager that outdoorsy people who are out camping in the woods are like a “mini-Japan”. The community has their own set of rules and behaviours that would make an honour system possible. Especially 40 years ago when it would have been more of a monoculture.
That probably has more to do with who immigrates to Switzerland. I don't now the numbers, but people who immigrate to Switzerland is probably fairly well educated and generally pretty well of.
Denmark is still a fairly high-trust society, not to the level of Switzerland or Japan. We're seeing certain items in supermarkets being locked away or chipped to prevent theft. Now that's not just because of immigrants, Danes steal from the supermarket as well, because prices on many items are increasing rapidly.
Switzerland's population would make it one of the biggest cities in the world, more than double the population of Los Angeles, and more than New York City. Neither of which could be counted as high trust.
The city of LA is just there for administrative purposes. People who live in "Burbank" or "Pasadena" are seen as living in "Los Angeles" by most people outside the region.
You can tell where the city ends very easily. There are well-defined boundaries. Government statistics take that into account. Here's the census page for the city of Los Angeles, which lists a population just under 4 million: https://data.census.gov/profile/Los_Angeles_city,_California...
Also in 2024, Japanese prison sentences were mostly between 1 and 3 years, and about two thirds were fully suspended. https://www.moj.go.jp/content/001436547.pdf (page 20). Assuming an average of two years for the third not-fully-suspended, that works out to 8 months of time spent in prison per person handed a prison sentence.
That results in about a factor of 7 difference in prison population simply due to the difference in average sentence length. Maybe the US should sentence more people to prison but keep each of them there shorter.
The US court system already relies heavily on plea deals to not jam up the courts. Increasing the throughput of the justice system to facilitate your idea would require an order of magnitude investment into more courts, judges, public defenders, prosecutors, etc. I'm all for it, but the incredible cost does have to be considered
And they heavily influence (using pressure such as off-the-record interviews, and long detention times during the investigations) the suspect's statements so that it says what they need to make it a crime, even when it isn't.
Whatever the suspect may say afterwards, they just have to point out to the signed statement and say "but here you confessed".
Source: I have been directly living such occurrence lol.
That's what has been coined the "hostage justice" of Japan (referring in particular to the "long detention times during investigations" part above).
given the stats above, 33 of 100k incarcerated, vs 541 of 100k in the USA. I'm inclined to think that the USA has far more of those types of cases than Japan.
Hmm, the thing is that the hostage justice system does have a deterrent effect.
Its net effect is that you absolutely do not want to have anything to do with the police to help solve your problems in the society (true problems, not merely e.g. asking for directions). And then you really want to avoid problems at all.
So, you cannot think of them as "friendly useful workers to help solve problems", because they are heavily incentivized and biased to find or invent crimes if you give them the opportunity.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but police interviews are recorded in the US?
And also, you always have the right to an attorney? (that's not the case in Japan except if you want to stay 20 days incarcerated while waiting for an attorney, all for a tiny minor dismeanor).
It's tempting to see security guards as a basic response to criminal behaviour. But I wonder if the causality is more complex than that. I can easily imagine growing up under different circumstances to view society as a case of "me" vs "them", and I'd be more inclined to lift from shops run by people who clearly see me as enough of a low-life that they'd pay some thugs to man-handle me out.
I live in a city where self-checkout was implemented for bus rides.
You still had a chance for a random bus inspection, but generally you can just walk into the bus and not pay anything, then walk out.
It was so strange at first, to see everyone paying when there was no authority demanding a payment.
Knowing that government trusts people around me to behave like good citizens, and knowing how many people actually follow the rules, definitely helped me to feel safer in the city.
15 years ago you had to put your wallet in the inner pocket because bags and outer pockets routinely got slashed. Now I can leave my bag on a bench.
This difference got erased only when economy became more stable, and employment went up.
But I didn't know that I could leave my bag on a bench before I saw with my own eyes that almost everyone tries to be a good citizen. Even if there is no punishment and a small reward for behaving badly
"15 years ago you had to put your wallet in the inner pocket because bags and outer pockets routinely got slashed."
It's decades since I backpacked around Europe on trains and such, and back then slashing pockets and bags was rife. I never traveled anywhere unless I was wearing a money belt strapped to my waist—it held my passport, traveler's checks, large denomination notes and credit cards. I kept my wallet (with only a small amount of cash) in my front jeans pockets—I reckoned that down there I'd notice any slashing pretty quickly. Pants with side pockets were a no-no because they were too easy to pickpocket.
I recall one particularly bad incident in Italy of being surrounded by organised mobs of kids who'd act in ways to distract one's attention whilst others tried to pickpocket one's valuables. I came out unscathed because I was wary from the start.
Later I was living and working in Europe and it was very obvious to me that this sort of crime is much more prevalent in areas where people are unemployed or where there is a great disparity between rich and poor. I've no doubt the solution to such crime is having a society where the distribution of wealth is more equitable.
Re that point and yours about self-checkout for bus rides. That system was implemented a few years ago where I am. I've made the interesting observation that those who travel outside normal to-and-from work hours—say late morning and early afternoon—are the ones most likely to not swipe their travel card on the payment terminal. When I've traveled at those times I'm surprised at the numbers who do not pay. This is in stark contrast to those who are traveling to and from work, at those hours just about everyone pays.
Again, this, no doubt, is an equity/financial issue. Those traveling in the 'off hours' are more likely to be unemployed and or financially hard up.
As a counter point, when I came to UK, it was super weird to see self checkout machines. Where I am from (Pakistan), I can't imagine anything like that. Although watched a video recently where in a rural area a guy left a cart of fruits on the side of road for people to buy the fruits and pay by themselves, at the end of the day cash was just little bit less than total amount.
These machines in UK felt like I was being trusted to pick items myself, and pay myself and I shouldn't break that trust.
Ironically I don't see these self checkout machines in Indian/Turkish/Kurdish etc super stores. In-fact, those stores trust there customers even less, they would ask you to leave your bags/trolleys at the door.
You're on multiple cameras for most of the self-checkouts in the UK, with at least some both capturing your face and an overhead view that will trigger a "are you sure you scanned this" complete with replay of what looked to the system of you potentially failing to scan an item before putting it on the scales on the other end if it looks like you move something past the scanner without the scanner triggering.
The system will also typically signal for an attendant if you after a short amount of time ensures the weight on the receiving end matches the expected weight of the items scanned so far.
There's not all that much trust involved in it, and I think just being aware of the cameras will make most people who might be tempted think twice.
Of course it's possible to steal still, but it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs the shrinkage to add up to a lower cost than having more people at the tills.
A quick search shows I can get fridges used for less than that in London, though mostly small ones. I guess to a lot of people, when they replace goods like that, the hassle of selling it outweighs the perceived return
What the article doesn't mention but the store's website https://tot-go12.com/ does is that you need to pass through facial recognition to enter the store and there are multiple cameras tracking whether you try to leave without paying. (Maybe like Amazon Checkout where there's humans continuously monitoring the video feed.)
"High trust society" or not, you need some minimum level of security to avoid becoming a honeypot for all the less-trustworthy individuals that exist in any society. Maybe the highest trust here is in the police actually showing up and doing something about it when they report a theft.
There are plenty of unmanned frozen food shops (gyoza etc.) with one CCTV. On the rare occasion that someone steals food, it is taken seriously and investigated.
People have been arrested here for grabbing a medium combini coffee cup and using it to serve a large coffee.
Junior high principal in Hyogo fired for stealing seven half cups of coffee [Feb. 3, 2024]
https://japantoday.com/category/national/junior-high-princip...
"Seven cups" ? i.e. a repeat offence ?
I'm not sure there's any scope for debate here really, surely its all a bit beyond beyond "it was an accident, Officer" at that stage ?
> People have been arrested here for grabbing a medium combini coffee cup and using it to serve a large coffee.
God I love Japan.
Studies show that the most important thing about criminal punishment is certainty of being caught and prosecuted.
> Studies show that the most important thing about criminal punishment is certainty of being caught and prosecuted.
This might lead someone to wrongly conclude that high order societies are a matter of policing. It's not. It's a matter of culture. Japan doesn't have more cops per citizen than your average 1st world country. But they do have a culture that deeply condemns crime and values honor.
They also have a hostage justice system with a 95%+ conviction rate, in which people can effectively be detained indefinitely (years) without trial as prosecutors hold out for confessions. In a very real sense, we started the United States of America specifically to avoid that kind of system. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
I agree, but I’d submit that the way the criminal justice system works reinforces culture. Swiftly catching and consistently punishing law breakers helps reinforce the social norms against crime.
Singapore was able to police itself into a high trust society
But they also won’t declare a death a murder unless they can solve it. They take their 100% solve rate quite seriously.
I know this is besides the point, incredibly petty and borderline psychotic, but... if you can fill your medium cup with the amount of a large one, wouldn't that mean that the store is the one cheating on you? The way this is playing in my head is: I grab the medium cup, try to outsmart the universe and pour a large into it, coffee overflows in my hand, and I watch justice being served as my hand gets burn and I cannot scream because that would denounce my scam.
Doesn't matter that they have cameras on top to monitor etc - it's still a high true, high order society that enables it.
Sn Francisco super markets on the other hand (and increasingly everywhere else), have to lock cheeses and baby formulas
> the police actually showing up and doing something about it when they report a theft.
That and this whole concept can only happen in places with low criminality. In Thailand I occasionally find small shops that have a CCTV and that's it (but the total value of goods on display likely does not exceed $100)
I wonder what does it take to get a society to have low criminality. IIUC Japan wasn't always this way. Could other societies become high trust? Singapore is. It wasn't always
If self-checkout stores[0] are a measure of being such a place: Ageing of society. I've read last year's statistics about my country's criminality and two things stand out:
1. It's half what it was 20 years ago.
2. The largest group of perpetrators are people in their mid 30s, not 17-20yo like it was two decades ago and they focus on online fraud, not actually going places to commit crimes.
[0] Specifically corner shops with a self-checkout machine and just one person behind the non-self checkout counter who wouldn't be able to react anyway should anyone leave with the goods.
Singapore was very deliberate and quite heavy handed in bringing that about: https://paulbacon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/z...
Or just the insurers paying up because the police provided a crime number.
This is how it works in the U.K. - everyone has cctv, not because it prevents theft or allows the police to investigate, but rather because it allows you insurance coverage for any losses.
If insurance became expensive enough (and logically the price must continue to rise as claims increase) then there will be a financial advantage for companies to design their shops not to need such insurance
> you need to pass through facial recognition to enter the store and there are multiple cameras tracking whether you try to leave without paying.
Totally irrelevant point.
Walk into any supermarket in a Western country these days.
The place is crawling in CCTV.
The packets of steak and other "expensive" stuff have RFID anti-theft tags on them.
The self-service checkouts have close-up CCTV and anti-theft weight comparison systems.
Many even employ security contractors to stand by the door.
Does it prevent thefts ?
Does it hell. The scumbag steals the goods and says F** Y** to the security guard on the way out. By the time the police get there (if they can even be bothered to turn up for such a minor crime) its too late.
So yes, I am with the original blog. CCTV or not, the sort of thing shown in the blog could only happen in Japan.
It’s because, in the U.S., nobody will bother to look at the CCTV to catch the perpetrator. Or even if they do, the court will release them because it’s a non-violent offense. The most important deterrent in criminal justice is the certainty that conduct will be punished.
Pure honor systems don't scale well in cities, even in Japan
That's wonderful, but it's not a big surprise for me.
When in Tokyo I encountered vending machines on a public street (the Ginza) that dispensed bottles of whiskey—Suntory if I recall—that operated 24 hours a day. If you wanted a drink at 3AM you could get it.
Where I am that vending machine would be vandalized overnight and the owner of such an appliance shop would be broke and out of business the next day.
Shame really.
Edit: A Westerner but longtime resident of Japan told me when I was working there of a hotel robbery where an American tourist had valuables and jewelry worth a substantial sum taken from her hotel room. The robbery was big enough to make the newspapers which led to the return of the jewelry. The thief after seeing the news story returned them with a message to the effect "Sorry, I wouldn't have stolen them if I'd known you were a visiting tourist".
Perhaps the story is apocryphal but it and other stories such as if you lose your wallet there's good chance it'll be returned complete with cash—is testament to the honesty of Japanese people.
While visiting Japan last year, I have witnessed a scene when one of my companions forgot his wallet, which also contained an expensive smartphone, in a train, when we have changed quickly the trains, and someone from the other train ran really, really fast, to catch us in the other train and give the forgotten wallet to its owner.
Than he ran equally fast to his train, which was ready to leave. Had he not run so fast while returning the wallet to its owner, he would have lost his train. Therefore, doing a good deed had required quite an effort for that Japanese, but this had not dissuaded him.
Those vending machines are supposed to check ID but I've never seen one do (I think cigarette machines do). They just turn off at night and apparently that's enough to stop children from using them.
It's quite some time since I've been there but I can't remember an ID system being in place. I didn't have to produce an ID and usually I selected non-alcoholic drinks. However, that was before the proliferation of smartphones, so back then it is likely there was no ID checking.
As a nonsmoker, I can't speak about cigarette machines, likely there was no ID on them too.
Nowadays, with smartphones etc. checking IDs is comparatively easy but I can't think how it would have been done back then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taspo
Right, that's cleared things up. Both the Taspo/Tobacco Card and vending machine capability (cash or credit, top up card, etc.) weren't available when I was there last. I'd reckon the strict ID requirements for Taspo card must have been quite a cultural shock. My recollection was that back then tobacco products were much more freely available than where I was living.
It didn't properly come out until 2008, so until then I suppose schoolchildren could have easily used the machines! Unimaginable in most countries.
You still see little islands of high trust in the US. I walked out of an HEB the other day and there were several pickup trucks idling in the parking lot with nobody inside of them. You could open the door and drive off with zero effort if you could find the insanity to do so. I often dont bother to lock my doors at home. The Walmart here doesn't hassle you upon exiting. The local community feels incredibly safe. Drive 20 miles south and you'll find a totally different universe.
> several pickup trucks idling in the parking lot
Way to make it very American..
Japan is obviously a "high trust" society, so I feel like this experiment will work.
I wish we had a way to make this sort of system work in a low trust society.
We do have a way - "high trust" enclaves inside the low trust society.
The modern examples in the USA are things like colleges, community centers, etc.
You gatekeeper the area and then everything inside is high-trust and you can get away with things like this.
You can also find it in rural areas and some very expensive islands, too.
While driving through upstate New York on a camping trip I found a maple syrup shop run on the honor system. Leave the money in an unlocked box. It was shocking. I bought a gallon.
I had the same experience in upstate NY. So many little boutique country stores with craft and art tables outside that just had venmo signs next to the crafts. My wife bought a few items and we were pleasantly surprised to see how many public purchases were made to that venmo account. And it wasn't super cheap junk/stuff either.
There are shops like that in Sweden and Germany, probably many other countries.
We have quite a few road side stalls like this around where I live in NZ, Honey, eggs, swedes are a common one. You hear of the odd theft from them every now and then but for the most part it seems to work well.
I wonder if this is actual high trust or that there are security cameras everywhere.
If you've been to the rural USA you'd know it's just high-trust (and the middle of nowhere). They're pretty common for low-value things like corn and farm produce; but I've seen syrup and honey, too.
There might be a camera but since there's usually no power, it'd have to be some sort of trail/game/deer cam. What would you do with the result besides some vigilante frontier justice? No cop anywhere but daytime children's TV is going to investigate the Case of the Stolen Syrup.
We once went to Florida and saw some open orange farms. We wanted to buy some, but there was nobody in sight - we got very confused until we saw a box which said "$X a bag"; there was a sack of bags nearby. My mind was blown.
That's a matter of scale. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_H...
> No cop anywhere but daytime children's TV is going to investigate the Case of the Stolen Syrup.
Or Japan apparently, according to some of the comments in this thread.
In what way are USA colleges high trust. USA colleges have very high petty theft.
> I wish we had a way to make this sort of system work in a low trust society.
I’d rather we had a way to change low trust societies into high trust.
After traveling for years, I often wonder how various cultures end up high or low trust. Wealth or financial inequality doesn't seem to be the main driving factor, despite seeming an obvious cause. Racial and ethnic homogeneity doesn't always explain it either.
Destruction of traditional culture by things like colonialism seems to be an important factor.
> Destruction of traditional culture by things like colonialism seems to be an important factor.
Were native peoples of North America high trust between tribes before colonialism?
I'm not that familiar with them, but my guess would be yes, at least for hunter-gatherers. I would think that bad behavior would get you kicked out of the community and lead to likely death.
The larger ancient cities that farmed would be more interesting, especially because today Latin America is one of the lowest trust regions of the world.
Colonialism is turning the UK into a low trust society?
I didn't suggest it was the only factor. I guess if you want a single explanation, any significant immigration or influence from a vastly different culture will likely lead to a lower trust society.
Agreed.
Agreed, points well made. I think an ordered society with long-term stability has much to do with it.
If there are consequences to bad behavior which results in real, felt, shame, then society will self-police to whatever values it holds. However, there can be downsides; for instance a lack of out-of-the-box thinking and individuality.
>for instance a lack of out-of-the-box thinking and individuality.
Overrated. There's close to 0% of it going on in "low trust societies" anyway. It's not like the average social media zombie in the west is anywhere near an "out of the box" thinker...
I used to buy firewood at National Forest camping sites in the US; there was a box where you dropped the money and then you grabbed a wood bundle.
Granted, this was almost 40 years ago, but this type of thing can work, even in less civilized places like the US.
They leave out more wood than a camper would even think to take because they only need one bundle every day or two. The sort of person who would need to steal a whole season's worth of wood is less likely to have the means to transport it all, and if they're so desperate that they'd go to the trouble then the Christian thing to do would be to let them have it.
Gillette razors on the other hand, are expensive to stock for their size, and easy to steal because of their size.
I’d wager that outdoorsy people who are out camping in the woods are like a “mini-Japan”. The community has their own set of rules and behaviours that would make an honour system possible. Especially 40 years ago when it would have been more of a monoculture.
The real challenge is figuring out how to build even a fraction of that in lower-trust environments
You can turn it into a high trust society. The mechanisms and procedures to achieve that are fairly well known.
High trust environments tend to crumble in society when you allow too much immigration. Japan’s xenophobia has worked well in this regard.
Switzerland is a diverse society with lots of immigration and it is also a high-trust society
That probably has more to do with who immigrates to Switzerland. I don't now the numbers, but people who immigrate to Switzerland is probably fairly well educated and generally pretty well of.
Denmark is still a fairly high-trust society, not to the level of Switzerland or Japan. We're seeing certain items in supermarkets being locked away or chipped to prevent theft. Now that's not just because of immigrants, Danes steal from the supermarket as well, because prices on many items are increasing rapidly.
The huge majority is from Germany, Italy, France, etc. A lot of it is highly vetted, professional migration.
If it adds enough of illegal immigrattion or low-grade legal one, it wont be a high trust society anymore.
Switzerland is so small, basically a city.
That's irrelevant to how the world works.
There are countries that are equal or much smaller than Switzerland with 10x worse crime and low trust. Just look at Jamaica.
And there are countries 12x bigger than Switzerland (like Japan) with high trust and low crime.
Switzerland's population would make it one of the biggest cities in the world, more than double the population of Los Angeles, and more than New York City. Neither of which could be counted as high trust.
The population of Switzerland is ~9 million. The population of LA metro is around 15 million, and NYC metro aroound 20 million
LA "the city" might be less but you can't tell where LA ends and it's other parts begin. It's one giant metropolis. Same with NYC.
The city of LA is just there for administrative purposes. People who live in "Burbank" or "Pasadena" are seen as living in "Los Angeles" by most people outside the region.
You can tell where the city ends very easily. There are well-defined boundaries. Government statistics take that into account. Here's the census page for the city of Los Angeles, which lists a population just under 4 million: https://data.census.gov/profile/Los_Angeles_city,_California...
Also depends on type though. I’ve seen honesty boxes work out fine where the immigration consists mostly of professionals.
And a 99.8% conviction rate.
Only 33 prisoners per 100k population (cf 541 in the US). Whatever they're doing, it's working.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...
In 2024, the average US prison sentence was for a duration of 52 months, with over half the total months being for drug trafficking (average 82 months) https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... (page 11).
Also in 2024, Japanese prison sentences were mostly between 1 and 3 years, and about two thirds were fully suspended. https://www.moj.go.jp/content/001436547.pdf (page 20). Assuming an average of two years for the third not-fully-suspended, that works out to 8 months of time spent in prison per person handed a prison sentence.
That results in about a factor of 7 difference in prison population simply due to the difference in average sentence length. Maybe the US should sentence more people to prison but keep each of them there shorter.
The US court system already relies heavily on plea deals to not jam up the courts. Increasing the throughput of the justice system to facilitate your idea would require an order of magnitude investment into more courts, judges, public defenders, prosecutors, etc. I'm all for it, but the incredible cost does have to be considered
Are plea deals factored into the US conviction rate?
In the PDF I linked above, on page 4, you can see that 97.2% of sentences result from guilty pleas and 2.8% from trials.
It's a different system, they don't go to court without iron-clad case. Japan does not have a large prison population.
And they heavily influence (using pressure such as off-the-record interviews, and long detention times during the investigations) the suspect's statements so that it says what they need to make it a crime, even when it isn't.
Whatever the suspect may say afterwards, they just have to point out to the signed statement and say "but here you confessed".
Source: I have been directly living such occurrence lol.
That's what has been coined the "hostage justice" of Japan (referring in particular to the "long detention times during investigations" part above).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage_justice
given the stats above, 33 of 100k incarcerated, vs 541 of 100k in the USA. I'm inclined to think that the USA has far more of those types of cases than Japan.
Hmm, the thing is that the hostage justice system does have a deterrent effect.
Its net effect is that you absolutely do not want to have anything to do with the police to help solve your problems in the society (true problems, not merely e.g. asking for directions). And then you really want to avoid problems at all.
So, you cannot think of them as "friendly useful workers to help solve problems", because they are heavily incentivized and biased to find or invent crimes if you give them the opportunity.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but police interviews are recorded in the US?
And also, you always have the right to an attorney? (that's not the case in Japan except if you want to stay 20 days incarcerated while waiting for an attorney, all for a tiny minor dismeanor).
> you absolutely do not want to have anything to do with the police to help solve your problems in the society
this is commonly said in the USA as well
Ah ok, I see.
Maybe I rather have (had) the notion of police as it exists in the UK or some European countries.
There was the French "police de proximité" who acted as friendly allies (it seems it was dismantled in 2003, unfortunately).
Even shops with security guards dont work in the UK at the moment. It's a shame this could never be a thing here.
It's tempting to see security guards as a basic response to criminal behaviour. But I wonder if the causality is more complex than that. I can easily imagine growing up under different circumstances to view society as a case of "me" vs "them", and I'd be more inclined to lift from shops run by people who clearly see me as enough of a low-life that they'd pay some thugs to man-handle me out.
I live in a city where self-checkout was implemented for bus rides.
You still had a chance for a random bus inspection, but generally you can just walk into the bus and not pay anything, then walk out.
It was so strange at first, to see everyone paying when there was no authority demanding a payment.
Knowing that government trusts people around me to behave like good citizens, and knowing how many people actually follow the rules, definitely helped me to feel safer in the city.
15 years ago you had to put your wallet in the inner pocket because bags and outer pockets routinely got slashed. Now I can leave my bag on a bench. This difference got erased only when economy became more stable, and employment went up.
But I didn't know that I could leave my bag on a bench before I saw with my own eyes that almost everyone tries to be a good citizen. Even if there is no punishment and a small reward for behaving badly
"15 years ago you had to put your wallet in the inner pocket because bags and outer pockets routinely got slashed."
It's decades since I backpacked around Europe on trains and such, and back then slashing pockets and bags was rife. I never traveled anywhere unless I was wearing a money belt strapped to my waist—it held my passport, traveler's checks, large denomination notes and credit cards. I kept my wallet (with only a small amount of cash) in my front jeans pockets—I reckoned that down there I'd notice any slashing pretty quickly. Pants with side pockets were a no-no because they were too easy to pickpocket.
I recall one particularly bad incident in Italy of being surrounded by organised mobs of kids who'd act in ways to distract one's attention whilst others tried to pickpocket one's valuables. I came out unscathed because I was wary from the start.
Later I was living and working in Europe and it was very obvious to me that this sort of crime is much more prevalent in areas where people are unemployed or where there is a great disparity between rich and poor. I've no doubt the solution to such crime is having a society where the distribution of wealth is more equitable.
Re that point and yours about self-checkout for bus rides. That system was implemented a few years ago where I am. I've made the interesting observation that those who travel outside normal to-and-from work hours—say late morning and early afternoon—are the ones most likely to not swipe their travel card on the payment terminal. When I've traveled at those times I'm surprised at the numbers who do not pay. This is in stark contrast to those who are traveling to and from work, at those hours just about everyone pays.
Again, this, no doubt, is an equity/financial issue. Those traveling in the 'off hours' are more likely to be unemployed and or financially hard up.
As a counter point, when I came to UK, it was super weird to see self checkout machines. Where I am from (Pakistan), I can't imagine anything like that. Although watched a video recently where in a rural area a guy left a cart of fruits on the side of road for people to buy the fruits and pay by themselves, at the end of the day cash was just little bit less than total amount.
These machines in UK felt like I was being trusted to pick items myself, and pay myself and I shouldn't break that trust.
Ironically I don't see these self checkout machines in Indian/Turkish/Kurdish etc super stores. In-fact, those stores trust there customers even less, they would ask you to leave your bags/trolleys at the door.
You're on multiple cameras for most of the self-checkouts in the UK, with at least some both capturing your face and an overhead view that will trigger a "are you sure you scanned this" complete with replay of what looked to the system of you potentially failing to scan an item before putting it on the scales on the other end if it looks like you move something past the scanner without the scanner triggering.
The system will also typically signal for an attendant if you after a short amount of time ensures the weight on the receiving end matches the expected weight of the items scanned so far.
There's not all that much trust involved in it, and I think just being aware of the cameras will make most people who might be tempted think twice.
Of course it's possible to steal still, but it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs the shrinkage to add up to a lower cost than having more people at the tills.
I think OP was afraid of making a mistake and stealing by accident.
I also don't like to use those systems if I have many hard to pack items. But at some point I guess you just remove humans completely.
They just save more money not hiring the cashier.
Sorta related:
Honesty Boxes in Scotland (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44824684 - Aug 2025 (59 comments)
This is one of those "only in Japan" stories that somehow manages to be both heartwarming and surreal
I'm blown away by a fridge costing <$100, used or not. Did I misunderstand the prices?
I can buy used fridges all day long for €50. I've gotten fridges for free that were still good for years after that.
No one wants used white goods. Fridges, washing machines and dishwashers you can pick up below $100 easily.
A quick search shows I can get fridges used for less than that in London, though mostly small ones. I guess to a lot of people, when they replace goods like that, the hassle of selling it outweighs the perceived return
No, you didn't. Says 10,000 yen, so about 70USD at the moment.
in some countries honour is to steal from "rich", so not universal :)
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