Low-Trust Society
Monday 29 December 2025
Kyle Saunders “The United States Has Become a Low-Trust Society — and That Changes Everything” link
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In high-trust environments, institutional breakdowns are treated as problems to be fixed. In low-trust environments, they are treated as proof that the system is fundamentally corrupt. The same event produces radically different reactions depending on the baseline level of legitimacy.
This is why fraud scandals, administrative failures, or enforcement lapses now carry outsized symbolic weight. They are no longer isolated incidents; they become narrative accelerants.
Recent high-profile welfare fraud cases illustrate this dynamic. While such cases are not representative of broader communities or programs, they nonetheless erode confidence precisely because trust is already thin. In a low-trust society, oversight failures are interpreted as intent, not error. The damage is social as much as fiscal.
Public health provides an even clearer example. Vaccine hesitancy during COVID was not simply about misinformation. It was about credibility deficits that predated the pandemic. Once trust was gone, expertise alone could not compensate.