Generalized distrust in a benign society costs more than misplaced risks

Evidence

In a relatively benign society, we can afford to take chances with people in general until we discover any of them not to be worthy of cooperation. If, in contrast, we had come to be distrusting in general, the result in a benign society would surely be far worse than what would follow from taking risks on people. Presumably, it would seem much more akin to much of international relations, as in the Cold War between East and West, in which distrust often seemed to be the baseline and trust to be an unreachable goal. Still, to be generally distrusting—or at least to fail to trust—would not be irrational or immoral in some contexts. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 605

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Saramago’s Hobbesian descent and Luhmann’s monitoring collapse — once trust is no longer the baseline, even benign contexts degrade into Cold-War-style mutual suspicion. — connects to: Individual-level rational-choice accounts of trust fail as general explanations; Misplaced trust costs far more than forgone trust, making distrust come more quickly; Trust arguments often assume benign societies that may not exist (+3 more)
• SEED: Could feed an essay on why failing to trust is contextually rational — the doctor’s wife’s risk-taking in Blindness as the benign-society counterexample.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 605

Broader Connections

• Universal distrust is too costly to be a rational strategy #corroborates (0.90)
• Repeated-interaction gains let trust outweigh distrust despite occasional great losses #corroborates (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 311
• Self-fulfilling distrust becomes individually rational and resistant to disproof #qualifies (0.72)