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Heh, as a (very white) American I presumed it was America in general today. From what I can see, it seems to be turning into a place where it's all scams, rug-pulls, crypto and sports gambling. This concerns me about the world that my 9 year old is growing up in, the only world he's ever known, even the early 2010s seemed to be higher trust than the past decade has felt like.
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That does seem like the way Capitalism is being presented these days. Move fast and break things struck me as also from the same "fuck it" ethos that pervades the Modern Valley.

It might be the Valley attracts this kind (of sociopath?). In "the day" I watched as some co-workers popped from company to company, never staying for more than 6 months, and getting a salary bump with each jump. I guess good for them?

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You don’t have to look any first than the White House to say that behavior is well-established in American culture, too. From the prosperity gospel to “don’t hate the player”, etc. this is deeply not a Chinese thing.
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> Ok, the implication that I'm reading between the lines is that this sort of behaviour is somehow more tolerated by people with names like Liu and Tan, but is this actually the case?

Of course not. Have you been following national news or politics the past few years, and the continued incredibly strong support bad actors received despite atrocious behavior and even allegedly criminal acts?

The grandparent commentor is just racist.

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> The grandparent comment is just racist.

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. The concept of low and high-trust societies is well-studied [0], though how a given country maps to it may be disputed.

0: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3997396/

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I think you’ve made an extreme leap in your interpretation of the comment you’re replying to…
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No, ‘high/low-trust culture’ has lately been co-opted as a racist dog whistle.
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This isn't true at all in general online discourse. Maybe on X, in which case I'd recommend getting off of X.

It's overwhelmingly brought up when talking about Japan (and sometimes Korea) in comparison to the US (or EU). With Japan (or Korea) being the high-trust culture in that comparison, and the US/EU being the low-trust one.

I guarantee you can do a search across mentions of high/low-trust culture across online platforms in the last 12 months and the large majority will be these contexts, i.e. Western countries described low-trust, not high-trust.

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I've definitely seen it used both ways, comparing Japan to other countries as well as India/Africa.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a "racist dog whistle" myself, though - there is a very real pattern that's being pointed out but the reason I made the GP comment is that from my experience I would assume that Chinese culture is about as trustworthy as the West.

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When One Nation here in Aus is yapping about “high trust societies” and talking about Japan etc. to me it is absolutely a racist dog whistle.
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> Maybe on X, in which case I'd recommend getting off of X.

Agreed, get off X anyway.

> This isn't true at all in general online discourse.

Maybe, but is this relevant? Was the grandparent comment "general online discourse" or was it specific online discourse coming from a place that does in fact use such language in that way.

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Huh, TIL. Thanks for pointing it out.
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It hasn't. People are talking about specific events here.

With your logic, every fact you dislike that makes your side of the argument look bad, can be dogwhitlse.

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I feel like it used to be an effective dog whistle, but has ceased to be since Trump and company came around.
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