[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Regardless of what you or I individually think about vaccines, it is indicative of belief and trust in the institutions.

Trade-offs. Regardless of what you think about Nazis, it was indicative of belief and trust in the institutions.

*Not a commentary on vaccines. I've had them all.

There were many interventions that could have been effective, and most of which the US population would have been largely opposed to, because there is in large part a culture that a person's circumstances are almost entirely of their own making.

You're preaching to a determinist. I believe in cause > effect. We're free to choose that which must occur (I've not yet solved paradox, so this is a stand-in wrong theory).

The thing is, our assumption that people are responsible for their actions IS functional and a requirement for orderly society. Even if people have no agency, nothing works unless we pretend they have it. If we accept all behavior because we're "born this way", then society collapses instantly. Somehow, destiny is not a sufficient excuse for doing wrong. Nobody accepts "I couldn't help myself", even if it's the truth.

I don't think individualism (or gun ownership) is necessarily incompatible with social cohesion, but it makes for a vicious cycle when the circumstances of some members of that community get bad enough that they turn to crime and violence.

Some believe it's more useful to make tools less accessible despite a continuous progression towards tool effectiveness and availability. They advocate for impotent men. Gun control is a lost cause. 3D printing has rendered the instinct to regulate tool availability meaningless. How much more freighting is the (near) future where basement dwellers can manipulate genetic code on a whim?

We don't need good tools, we need good people. Actually, good people is non-optional.

One key difference, I think, can be illustrated by an example: If a typical American knew their neighbor were struggling, they would be highly unlikely to give money or help to their neighbor, even if they knew that, in practical terms, it would make their own children and family safer.

I grew up in rural Oregon, not southern California, so my experience doesn't agree with your assertion. My experience is that the more densely populated an area is, the less people take responsibility, because look at all those others who might be more highly qualified to give a damn. They might even have a certificate or other paper that gives them permission to do good.

Why give to someone who had the moral failing of not working or providing for his or herself?

Exactly. You'll find that when more is required of folks, they will do it. The bottom is defined by how far down society allows a person to continue breathing. That's not a boundary I'm interested in exploring.

Here, culturally, you're much more likely to see the average person or family say, "It doesn't matter why they're struggling,

That's a dumb culture then, and it has a shorter "best by" date than others. Being uninterested in the cause of failure is the definition of failure.

Originally Posted by Ecky

I was under the impression many Native Americans did not highly trust (for example) the US federal government to be looking out for their best interests

The only folks that trust the largest institutions only do so because said institutions are incentivized to indoctrinate youth into believing big government is to be trusted.

As an aside, I'm native American, because I'm not native to anywhere else.

Regarding Marxism, I may also be naive, but I'm under the impression people don't join en masse if they're content with the status quo. That contentment may not have a direct relationship to living conditions.

Marxism has nothing to do with living conditions and everything to do with a juvenile lens of "us and them". We should pity everyone fooled into that downward looking frame of misery and destruction.

Originally Posted by freebeard

Here the indigenous people have a high trust society, it's hyphenated-Americans that perpetuate the cycle.

I don't disagree, but I find it more useful to regard people individually, and not as members of arbitrary groups. My expectation of folks mostly revolves around age and underlying mental capability, and nothing else.