Low-Trust Dystopias And High-Trust Dystopias - Dangerous Freedom Versus Safe Subjugation

[Breadbassket]

Everyone knows of low-trust and high-trust societies, but what about if either are taken down a dark path? To summarize the two concepts as concisely as possible, a low-trust dystopia is one where the state is weak or nonexistent while a high-trust dystopia is one where the state is powerfully centralized and led in a tyrannical manner.

Here are the characteristics of each:
Starting with what the low-trust dystopia, it is basically a form of anarchy. The enforcement of the law is not always something to be expected in such places, if it can be enforced at all to begin with. Society is fragmented and gangs are rampant. Tribalism and loyalty to clans may also appear. Violent non-state actors emerge as a way to create a sort of unofficial ad hoc "government" since they are able to enforce their will with a rudimentary form of totalitarianism. This abominable idea of a polity may not all that be long-lasting in the grand scheme of things as they can appear temporarily in power vacuums. A real example of a low-trust dystopia would be Somalia and a fictional one that comes to mind is the world of Mad Max.

As for a high-trust dystopia, they are often what comes to mind when one thinks of the idea of a dystopia. Everything is orderly, everything is neat but it is all controlled. Discontent is crushed with secret police, the military and the might of an all pervasive surveillance state. These places are authoritarian and autocratic but may try to present themselves as something else entirely. Propaganda and attempts at conditioning are wide-spread. There is an education system within them but they focus more on indoctrination to create state loyalty rather then any real learning. A high-trust dystopia can be more long-lasting then a low-trust one but can internally collapse due to coups, extreme public discontent (sometimes funded or supported by outside forces) or when a deceased leader is being replaced by a new one. High-trust dystopias are places like North Korea or Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

While both of these societal positions can and have existed in our world before, I will note that they are purely seen in pieces of media rather then in reality. Every nation and country on Earth is on a spectrum between a low-trust and high-trust dystopian existence and the vast majority fall somewhere in the middle or are sliding back and forth. Using a spectrum makes the most sense as to explain why societies can have anarcho-tyranny, two-tier policing and selective enforcement of the law, be it on a national or localized scale despite being something resembling a high-trust society. In this regard, a high-trust dystopia has the means to artificially create a low-trust dystopia through law and enforcement of it but a low-trust dystopia cannot intentionally create a high-trust one as it lacks the means to do so.

Ultimately, the pandemonium and oppression of the subject matter of this post would not be ideal to most but they are worth elaborating on.

 

[draggs]

Low-trust dystopia with society collapsing: choose your own post-apocalyptic story that doesn't involve aliens or zombies or WW3

Low-trust dystopia with society not collapsing: 1984. I disagree entirely with you that 1984 is a high-trust dystopia. No one trusts anyone in 1984, except for trust in Big Brother. The proles and the Outer Party are encouraged by the Inner Party to engage in low-trust social behavior among themselves, it distracts them and expends their energy that might otherwise be used in a revolution

It could also be argued that most of the Inner Party is also encouraged not to trust other Inner Party members, it's implied there's an Inner Party to the Inner Party (men like O'Brien, although again it could also be argued that O'Brien is just a higher cog in the Inner Party who has been reconditioned and controlled by even higher leaders, who are never named or seen, instead of being a member of that highest circle of the Party himself) who manipulate the less-high members of the Inner Party also

High-trust dystopia: Brave New World

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I'm taking an issue with your taxonomy

a low-trust dystopia is one where the state is weak or nonexistent

it is basically a form of anarchy

The features you describe after that are literally not the absence of rulership. Gangs, clans, warlords, violent non-state actors enforcing demands over territory is a description of rival coercive rulers. By no means does that mean freedom, it's just decentralized predation.
A gang that controls territory, extracts resources, enforces rules, and punishes disobedience is a crude state, or at least a state embryo. The only real difference between that and a state is mostly scale, stability, bureaucracy, and recognition. So I completely reject your "state versus chaos" thinking, the thing you're describing is centralized coercion versus decentralized coercion.
The same issue appears with your description of high-trust dystopias. To call a surveillance tyranny "high-trust" is strange. If order depends on secret police, propaganda, conditioning, and an all-pervasive surveillance apparatus, then the order is resting on fear, dependency, and controlled incentives. Does not sound like high trust to me.

Freedom is neither gang rule nor state rule. It requires law in the proper sense (property boundaries, contract, restitution, defense, and dispute resolution - without a coercive monopoly claiming the right to tax, legislate, and adjudicate over non-consenting people).
Essentially you're better off redescribing your spectrum as between fragmented predation and monopolized predation. Actual freedom is outside of that spectrum.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

The GDR was the epitome of high-trust dystopia. Life was comfortable, easy and predictable, all you needed to do was just play the game and you were taken care of.

 

[Gog & Magog]

High-trust dystopias are places like North Korea or Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I wouldn't call a society of paranoid tattle-tales a high-trust society.

 

[Breadbassket]

I'm taking an issue with your taxonomy

The features you describe after that are literally not the absence of rulership. Gangs, clans, warlords, violent non-state actors enforcing demands over territory is a description of rival coercive rulers. By no means does that mean freedom, it's just decentralized predation.
A gang that controls territory, extracts resources, enforces rules, and punishes disobedience is a crude state, or at least a state embryo. The only real difference between that and a state is mostly scale, stability, bureaucracy, and recognition. So I completely reject your "state versus chaos" thinking, the thing you're describing is centralized coercion versus decentralized coercion.
The same issue appears with your description of high-trust dystopias. To call a surveillance tyranny "high-trust" is strange. If order depends on secret police, propaganda, conditioning, and an all-pervasive surveillance apparatus, then the order is resting on fear, dependency, and controlled incentives. Does not sound like high trust to me.

Freedom is neither gang rule nor state rule. It requires law in the proper sense (property boundaries, contract, restitution, defense, and dispute resolution - without a coercive monopoly claiming the right to tax, legislate, and adjudicate over non-consenting people).
Essentially you're better off redescribing your spectrum as between fragmented predation and monopolized predation. Actual freedom is outside of that spectrum.

You make some interesting points. There is a slight possibility I may of unintentionally taken some inspiration from the ideas of Thomas Hobbes when making the original post.

 

[Cun75p4rkl35]

Aren't high trust dystopias just Japan (before they started letting people in) and South Korea

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

You make some interesting points. There is a slight possibility I may of unintentionally taken some inspiration from the ideas of Thomas Hobbes when making the original post.

The Hobbesian move is basically to treat the absence of a sovereign monopoly as the absence of order. So once you accept that premise, "anarchy" starts looking like gangs, clan warfare, and everyone preying on everyone else until a state imposes structure.
My issue with this premise is that it fails to take into account the key distinction. That is, a stateless order and a warlord/gang order are not the same thing. If a gang controls territory, extracts tribute, enforces commands, and punishes disobedience, then it is already functioning as a state. Just because it has yet to gain UN membership doesn't mean this is freedom.

I think you can salvage the taxonomy in the OP by separating the axes. Centralized coercion vs fragmented coercion on one axis, high-trust vs low-trust social relations on the other, and freedom vs subjugation on a third one.
That is, a society can be low-trust under a powerful state. A society can be orderly without a state. A society can have no recognized state and still be ruled by gangs in practice. And a "high-trust dystopia" might not be high trust at all if the apparent order depends on surveillance, indoctrination, and punishment.

tl;dr Hobbes gives you one possible interpretation of statelessness, and it's a very flawed and nonsensical one

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

I will note that they are purely seen in pieces of media rather then in reality. Every nation and country on Earth is on a spectrum between a low-trust and high-trust dystopian existence and the vast majority fall somewhere in the middle or are sliding back and forth.

I would say that this only happens in the modern day (aka post-2016 Internet or just about any western country in the modern day). Before then most dystopias are some sort of extreme "high trust" dystopia and some of them like Medieval Europe or the Khmer Rouge would put fictional ones like the Imperium of Mankind or 1984 Oceania to shame.

Whatever happens after the Globalist NWO is definitely a "low trust" dystopia that never ends however.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I’m not sure if I can agree with characterizing totalitarian societies as high trust. There’s some high trust implicit I guess in their founding - the totalitarians had to believe totalitarianism would go well - but they usually wind up broken low trust societies in the end because totalitarianism breeds horrible behavior between people.