Which direction does the causation within that correlation (if any) flow?
I can easily conjure a scenario where high per-capita GDP makes trusting easier (either because there’s enough to go around and/or because there are reliable police/judicial sanctions for violating trust) than in a hardscrabble low per-capita GDP society with lower (insufficient?) lawfulness.
Re:Non-Zero-Sum Games
by aprilthird2021 on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @01:38PM
(#46436434)
That's terrible proof. Anything better?
Yemen and the US are equal shades on that trust polling map. That alone should show you it's not really a factor.
India has a higher GDP and GDP per capita than it's neighbor Pakistan, but Pakistan has quite a higher trust score on your map than India.
There are many more examples, just these jumped out at me.
Pretty clear trend: low-trust societies have low gdp and high-trust societies have high gdp, regardless of resource distribution. Africa/South America are resource rich, japan/iceland are resource poor.