It's not that complicated: statistics matter.

5% of people create 90% of the crime. Double 5% to 10% and you double the crime. Make it 50% and and you 10x the crime.

You still have 50% of non-criminals but society with 50% criminals has way more crime than society with 5% criminals.

You might say high-crime society is much worse than low-crime society even though they both have individuals that are criminals and non-criminals.

Replace "crime" with "trust" and you understand high-trust vs. low-trust society. They both have individuals with various levels of trust, but emergent behavior driven by statistics creates a very different society.

> there's no difference between "truly creative work" and "truly creative and profitable work"

To state the obvious, the difference is "profit".

Also I don't see you're bringing the "true scottsman" judgement here. What's the difference between "creative" and "truly creative" work. Who gets to decide what is "truly creative" vs. merely "creative".

I think you gotta define where you're drawing the box. Depending on the context, "society" might be your nation, your office, or just a 1:1 relationship with your coworker.

That indicates that you live in a relatively high-trust society. Obviously there is a spectrum and aspects, but they tend to correlate.

I don't know of any real-world society that would be very high-trust in one regard (say, keeping their doors unlocked), but very low-trust in another (say, routinely poisoning their spices with lead to make them look more appealing - yes, this happens [0]).

[0] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/02/how-to-stop-tur...

Have you not been to any so called low trust country? The difference is quite apparent in how people regard each other. With your alias, parts of Italy would qualify.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/01/where-mos...