Crime, falling marriage, and more stringent return policies: The high costs of low-trust society

I saw this story about retail return fraud, and it made me think about our decline in marriage and falling birthrates.

CNBC reports that folks are fraudulently claiming refunds by falsely claiming that something never arrived, sending back stolen items or other items, or trying to exploit the “just keep it” method of returns some retailers have embraced to reduce shipping costs.

“As those tactics spread, many companies have started to make it tougher to return items,” CNBC reported.

The CEO of Saks told CNBC, “It’s really putting a damper on your own experience, because right now, I look at it like the Plexiglas at the drugstore. We’re having to do a version of that on our website, we’re adding friction to the customer experience, to even the good actors. … That’s a problem for us, and we’re going to have to fix it.”

This is part of a broader societal trend: Americans trust one another less, in part because Americans are becoming less trustworthy.

We could delve into the distrust of authorities — we could talk about Jan. 6, Russiagate conspiracy theories, increasing rejection of all vaccines, etc. — but it’s more telling and more distressing to focus on Americans’ increasing distrust of their neighbors and compatriots.

Chris Arnade, who spends his life wandering the streets of different countries, wrote earlier this month on the ugliness, inconvenience, and inhumanness of “high-regulation, low-trust societies.”

“Like a ratchet wheel,” Arnade writes, “once social trust comes undone, it spins quickly out of control, and getting it wound back is a long, arduous, and complex process.”

Arnade last fall had highlighted the plague of dishonest folks exploiting high-trust cultures.

The YouTuber Fidias, a Cypriot, is proud of his dishonesty and theft. The fact that Japan’s train system makes such theft easy makes the guy feel clever.

This is its own genre on social media: exploit a system that just kind of relies on people not being lying thieves.

Becoming a low-trust society introduces massive economic inefficiencies. “Just keep it” returns save on unnecessary shipping costs and fuel consumption. Stores plagued by theft have to lock everything up, and so everyone wastes more time shopping.

Outside of retail, this phenomenon is clear. It’s nicer and easier when your kids can just leave their bikes in the front yard without having to lock them down in the garage.

Neighborliness and social trust also reduce crime.

But here’s another bitter fruit of our low-trust society: the decline in marriage and family formation.

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In my forthcoming book, I quote young adults explaining that they cannot start a family because that would make them economically vulnerable. If you want to be autonomous, you need to build a zero-trust life, which precludes lasting commitments and the dependence that comes with marriage and family.

Collapsing social trust is the central problem in American culture today.