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0 pointspjc506d ago0 comments

Yes. Hence the stories of people (Brezhnev?) being astonished and baffled at simply walking into an American supermarket.

Of course, one reason why there wasn't much on the shelves was it had been already stolen by other people closer to the source ...

(something of a generic problem of low trust societies, not specific to Communism. I think we sometimes don't appreciate how valuable a high trust society is to us in the West, which is why people trying to destroy it by looting from the top are particularly dangerous: the rot spreads from the top)

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jsiepkes6d ago

> Yes. Hence the stories of people (Brezhnev?) being astonished and baffled at simply walking into an American supermarket.

Way later even; It was Yeltsin who wandered (it was unplanned) into a grocery store in Texas [1].

[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/happy-yeltsin-supermarket-day-0

mft_6d ago

Does the stealing come from the low-trust society, or does the societal situation drive people to theft, which we then label ‘low-trust’?

zorked6d ago

If there are extremely poor, high-trust societies, then trust is its own variable. If not, then it's a post-hoc explanation.

mft_5d ago

I suspect it's an imperfect correlation. Other factors like level of income inequality, efficacy/harshness of law enforcement, societal cohesion, would likely influence.

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