Low-Trust Society

The loop begins with an expectation: other people will act selfishly. Cooperation then looks like unilateral exposure, while selfishness looks like protection. People defect first, withdraw, or spend resources defending themselves. Those choices make cooperative behavior rarer and supply fresh evidence that nobody can be trusted. What appears to be a society full of independently selfish individuals is partly an equilibrium sustained by mutual anticipation—a collective action problem in which individually defensive choices leave everyone worse off.

This lens should not turn every precaution into pathology. Trust creates genuine exposure to exploitation; the relevant contrast is not blind faith versus selfishness, but whether defensive effort matches the actual risk. The Trust-Risk Trade-off matters because lowering your guard unilaterally can be costly when betrayal remains likely.