Pinboard (robertogreco) https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/ recent bookmarks from robertogreco The Hidden Tax of Living in a Low-Trust Society: How Collapsed Trust Costs You Money 2026-03-01T23:14:00+00:00 https://yourbrainonmoney.substack.com/p/low-trust-society-cost robertogrecoThe friction is very much structural. It’s a tax on everything, paid in time, money, and cognitive bandwidth. Last week, I wrote about 2025 as the year the grift economy went mainstream — surveillance pricing, prediction markets, AI slop, fraud at industrial scale. All of that is real. But it’s downstream of something deeper: we live in an economy that has systematically destroyed the conditions for trust, and then charges us for the workarounds. What low trust looks like in practice Consider the subscription economy. What was once a convenience — auto-renew so you don’t have to think about it — has become a tool of exploitation. Surveillance pricing that charges you the maximum the algorithm thinks you’ll tolerate. Cancellation processes so labyrinthine that Amazon named theirs “Iliad” internally — as in, the epic Greek poem — because escaping was supposed to be an odyssey. (They settled an FTC lawsuit over it.) Junk fees buried in checkout flows. Shrinkflation. Service shrinkflation — hotels offering fewer cleanings, loyalty programs requiring more points, AI chatbots replacing human service. A lot of today’s regulatory apparatus now exists because companies abused the assumption of good faith. Or consider the job market. Fake job listings — “ghost jobs“ that companies post with no intention of filling — have become so pervasive that they distort labor market data and waste millions of hours of applicant time. [graph] Why do they exist? Because companies discovered that the appearance of hiring is useful for investor relations, for internal politics, for building a candidate pipeline. The cost is externalized onto the people who spend hours tailoring resumes and sitting through interviews for positions that were never real. When the system rewards dishonesty, dishonesty is what you get. And that’s how we get the scam economy As I wrote last week, the grift economy isn’t just about single bad actors — it’s what a low-trust system produces. When institutions and corporations behave in predatory ways, individuals start to adopt the same logic. If the system is a grift, then grifting becomes rational. If everyone is trying to extract value from you, why wouldn’t you try to extract value from them? The explosion of scams, side-hustle culture repackaged as “courses” that teach you to scam others, dropshipping empires built on misleading ads, influencer marketing that can’t be distinguished from real advice. The rise of “fake it till you make it” as a legitimate business philosophy. Something like Theranos didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in a culture where the line between storytelling and fraud had been so thoroughly blurred that a company could fake an entire technology and attract billions in investment. The scam economy is what a low-trust system produces. When people lose faith that playing by the rules leads to fair outcomes, the rules start to feel optional. And once that happens, trust erodes further, which makes the rules feel even more optional, which erodes trust further still. It’s a death spiral. And the people who suffer most are the ones who can least afford to. Wealthy people can absorb the cost of a bad deal, a misleading investment, a predatory subscription. They have lawyers. They have financial advisors. For everyone else, a single scam — a fake landlord, a fraudulent contractor, a deceptive loan — can be financially devastating. Low trust is regressive. It functions as a tax on the poor. The psychological tax Living in a state of perpetual vigilance is cognitively expensive. Every email could be phishing. Every phone call could be fraud. Every price could be inflated, every review could be fake, every “limited time offer” could be manufactured urgency. There’s a clear mental labor involved with trying to figure out if you’re getting dupped or not. Behavioral economists call this “decision fatigue.” But it’s more than that. It’s trust fatigue — the weariness of living in a world where you have to assume bad faith as your default.
People in low-trust environments experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and chronic stress. They’re more likely to feel isolated, because distrust doesn’t stay contained to commercial transactions — it bleeds into personal relationships. If you spend all day navigating systems designed to exploit you, it becomes harder to turn that off when you get home.
There’s a concept in psychology called “epistemic learned helplessness“ — the state where you’ve been deceived so many times that you stop trying to figure out what’s true. You don’t become smarter or more discerning. You just give up on discernment entirely. This is where conspiracy thinking flourishes. And that, conspiracy thinking, is the psychological endgame of a low-trust economy. Not a population of savvy, skeptical consumers making smart choices. A population of exhausted, anxious people who can’t tell what’s real anymore. *** How we got here The erosion of trust in our country is the predictable outcome of specific economic choices. • Start with deregulation. When you systematically remove the guardrails that prevented companies from deceiving consumers — and then underfund the agencies tasked with enforcing what remains — you help create an environment where dishonesty is profitable. • Add financialization. When companies are optimized for quarterly earnings rather than long-term value creation, customer relationships are viewed as a short-term extraction opportunity. • Layer on the platform economy, which has created new and spectacular ways to scale dishonesty. Fake reviews are an industry. Dark patterns — interface designs specifically engineered to trick you into choices you didn’t mean to make — become the standard. • And then there’s consolidation. When industries are dominated by a handful of players, consumers can’t make better choices (because there are none). Trust as a public good Trust is not just a nice-to-have. It’s not a soft, sentimental concept that belongs in a TED Talk but not in serious economic analysis.
Trust is a public good — like clean air, like roads, like the electrical grid. It’s the invisible infrastructure that makes everything else work.
And like all public goods, it’s subject to the tragedy of the commons. Every company that uses a dark pattern, every platform that allows fake reviews, every employer that posts a ghost job — they’re each making a singular rational decision that degrades a shared resource. No individual actor bears the full cost of the trust they destroy. But collectively, we all pay for it. In higher transaction costs. In wasted time. In anxiety. In a political system increasingly unable to function because its citizens don’t believe anything anymore. The idea that self-interest, left alone, will produce good outcomes? It’s failed. Markets need trust to function. And markets, left to their own devices, will consume the trust they depend on. Rebuilding trust requires treating it like the infrastructure it is. Real regulation with real enforcement and real penalties. Antitrust action that restores competitive markets where you can actually choose trustworthy businesses. Incentive structures that reward long-term relationships over short-term extraction. But it also requires something that can’t be legislated: people and communities choosing to operate differently. Choosing trust not as naïveté, but as strategy. That’s what I want to explore next week — community as an economic strategy, not just a nice-to-have. How investing in relationships might be the smartest financial decision you can make. How trust, when you build it intentionally, compounds the same way money does."]]> hannahorvath 2026 economics capitalism society trush politics media socialcapital surveillance surveillancepricing shrinkflation junkfees amazon labor work jobmarket ghostjobs hiring jobseeing scams theranos finance inequality psychology decisionfatique stress anxiety depression deregulation financialization economy darkpatterns misinformation consolidation monopolies publicgood https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:469035c9ebfd/ The Ideology of Contentmaxxing - YouTube 2026-02-23T04:54:51+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jtBSC-ZgCI robertogreco aidanwalker metrics looksmaxxing content contentmaxxing quantification latefascistaesthetics aesthetics reality hyperrealism hyperreality socialmedia measurement 2026 algorithms microfractures machines economics fascism web online internet rationalism transhumanism ideology ritual louisalthusser althusser engagement institutions popularity platforms instagram tiktok grades grading taste socialcapital pierrebourdieu performance surveillance attention competition access success interestingness society fascistaesthetics bodies maximization optimization hyperoptimization credibility individualism dehumanization mutilation taboos fame andrewtate nickfuentes clipfarming sneako myrongaines tristantate malcontents jamiecohen jestermaxxing farright rightwing radicalization nihilism politics audience desperation extraction sadomasochism attentioneconomy self-harm men whitesupremacy normality radicalism subjugation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:23dcb76ab2b3/ Gaming the System - Comment Magazine 2026-02-16T00:22:17+00:00 https://comment.org/gaming-the-system/ robertogreco us society loneliness boredom despair scottpell youth socialisolation isolation economics rustbelt hannaharendt socialcapital economy gentrification professionalclass class mentalhealth socialengagement gerontocracy agesegregation children adolescence videogames games gaming men gender saraheekhoffzylstra agency matthewloftus genz generationz opportunity jonathanhaidt keantwenge claremorell withdrawal jdvance policy birthrate addiction chrisopherlasch patrickdeneen elites elitism midwest behavior dystopia production productivity rural socialization https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:477d55651344/ Institutions are how we scale up cooperation among millions | Aeon Essays 2026-02-14T06:50:07+00:00 https://aeon.co/essays/institutions-are-how-we-scale-up-cooperation-among-millions robertogreco institutions 2026 julienlie-panis technology trust relations citizens citizenship accountability publicgood elinorostrom society authorities authority deirdremccloskey jamesmadison us stevenlevitsky danielziblatt democracy corruption thomasjefferson federalism johnadams constitution cooperation italy italia robertputnam emillia-romagna calabria socialcapital 1970s 1980s politics markets cities nations scale governance government antcoloonies ants evolutionarybiology survival reputation kinship strangers japan reciprocation commons https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0b40139a4670/ Across Cultures, One Key to Happiness Stands Out | The MIT Press Reader 2025-07-31T20:00:07+00:00 https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/across-cultures-one-key-to-happiness-stands-out/ robertogreco well-being wellbeing relationships happiness 2025 timlonas socialcontext individualism positiveopsychiology west sonialyubomirsky johnhelliwell robertputnam community families marriage health friendship ruutveenhoven sociology isolation perrerbourdieu socialcapital recognition belonging trust gliffordgeertz collectivism richardnisbett cognition psychology authenticity autonomy social https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d20896fbf08d/ An Honest Living: A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries with Steven Salaita - YouTube 2024-03-14T18:34:25+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eegzTvPT6xY robertogreco stevensalaita millennialsarekillingcapitalism 2024 academia highered highereducation palestine israel colleges universities zionism capitalism anxiety quiet socialpressure socialfunctions cliques labor work antizionism solitude grace jaredware oppression repression censorship principles solidarity media circumspection rulingclass brandequity radicalism orthodoxy careerism socialmedia compromises medialiteracy gatekeeping tastemakers activism scholars scholarship promotion education socialcapital cliquishness decolonization kinship community ostracism exposure mainstreammedia transactionalrelationships aspirations branding personalbranding audience ideas discussion debate networking values transactional conversation organizing presence onlinepresence internet online culture algorithms attention consumerism 2014 2017 ulteriormotives motivation politics workplacepolitics workplace left socialdemocrats exploitation sensationalism snitching snitches busdriving schoolbus children language immigrants us unemployment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7dcf0578ec40/ The Power of Changing Your Mind | TIME 2024-01-19T20:28:01+00:00 https://time.com/6556113/curiosity-propaganda-hala-alyan-essay/ robertogreco halaalyan howwelearn mindchanging 2024 palestine propaganda deprogramming cognition learning israel rationality dankahan decisionmaking change capitalism guilt reparations cognitiveflexibility humility wrongness justice gaza politics politicians dehumanization society socialcapital equality liberation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bff48b968fa5/ The Analog City and the Digital City — The New Atlantis 2020-11-08T23:13:43+00:00 https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-analog-city-and-the-digital-city robertogrecoThe machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. We have focused on how digital media transforms the subjective experience of individuals. The political corollary is that it enables and empowers regimes of algorithmic governance, predictive analytics, and social credit. The profound erosion of trust in the Digital City leaves a vacuum, and we look to our tools to fill it. We seem set upon interlocking trajectories: of ever greater swaths of the human experience being computationally managed, and of intractable human subjects increasingly breaking down or revolting against these conditions. From another vantage point, however, we might see this as a hopeful moment, full of promise and opportunity. Another path also seems possible. Freed from certain unsustainable illusions about the nature of the self and the world, we may now be called back to reckon with reality in a new, more chastened and more responsible manner. It is possible that the Promethean aspirations that characterized the modern self and modern society may now yield to a more sober assessment of the limits within which genuine human flourishing might occur. It is possible, too, that we may learn once again the necessity of virtues, public and private — that we will no longer, as T. S. Eliot put it, be “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”"]]> lmsacasas digital newmedia writing howwewrite reading 2020 howweread secondaryorality walterong politics discourse audience abundance scarcity news print text communication neilpostman digitalcity analogcity truth speech digitalmedia socialmedia saintaugustine change liminality factchecking publishing jaydavidbolter reformation scientificrevolution history internet web online smartphones publiclife cities urban urbanism community howwethink thinking nicholascarr 2008 web2.0 facebook twitter algorithms moderation commenting tv television video dialogue criticalthinking affordances technology citizenship censorship values char charlestaylor bufferedself disenchantment meaning meaningmaking magic power objects heresy security purity bots data bigdata automation knowledge systems systemsthinking vulnerability time place now identity sharedtime sharedspace simultaneity realtime telegraph radio presence social belonging ivanillich memory memories language literacy orality oraltradition fables institutions bureaucra https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9c6b35065c0c/ “Students as Creators” and the Theology of the Attention Economy | Hapgood 2017-09-10T22:40:18+00:00 https://hapgood.us/2017/09/05/students-as-creators-and-the-capitalist-impulse/ robertogreco attention productivity socialmedia mikecaulfield 2017 attentioneconomy listenting internet web online benjamindoxtdator sfsh socialcapital presentationofself creativity creation resistance listening thinking cv https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0648ec60120a/ 33 : Conversation with Mimi Ito by Joi Ito 2017-02-13T00:13:40+00:00 https://soundcloud.com/joi-ito/33-conversation-with-mimi-ito robertogreco joiito mimiito 2017 learning education parenting howwelearn schools sfsh internet interest-drivenlearning howeteach connectedlearning socialscience digital digitalmedia interest-basedlearning informallearning classroomlearning screentime edtech homago identity belonging socialmedia social sociallearning mentoring counseling equity peers mobility online peertopeer teaching howweteach privilege montessori makermovement progressive progressiveeducation highered highereducation admissions testing standardizedtesting traditionalschools schoolindustrialcomplex unschooling deschooling agesegregation multiageclassrooms grades grading measurement quantification hiring meritocracy assessment socialcapital networks sorting selectivity elitism addedvalue knowledgeproduction careers credentials credentialing colleges universities pedagogy https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bcdf2cec639c/ Trust Me - Freakonomics Freakonomics 2016-11-19T20:07:12+00:00 http://freakonomics.com/podcast/trust-me/ robertogreco trust diversity socialtrust 2016 us society socialunity via:davidtedu trustworthiness socialcapital australia uk netherlands davidhalpern stephendubner bobputnam italy corruption socialnetworks civics government governance community brazil brasil norway edglaeser tobymoscowitz hunterwendelstedt ethnicity stockholm education colleges universities military athletics multiculturalism culture law economics behavior technology videogames socialmedia television tv toolsforconviviality hitchhiking italia edwardglaeser https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:714771109027/ Should teachers care about Pokémon Go? | Playable 2016-07-29T23:40:38+00:00 https://deangroom.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/should-teachers-care-about-pokemon-go/ robertogreco dengroom pokemon pokémon pokémongo education schools teaching howweteach minecraft minecraftedu gamification socialcapital play games gaming relationships ingress edtech mmos mmorpgs mobas networkedgaming transmedia media args pokemongo https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3629fd077402/ Why Trump voters are not “complete idiots” — Medium 2016-06-24T18:42:26+00:00 https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/trump-politics-and-option-pricing-or-why-trump-voters-are-not-idiots-1e364a4ed940#.ben96loxo robertogreco chrisarnade 2016 donaldtrump politics us fascism anger society elitism education religion unions economics election socialcapital classism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:55fc0bd8e8b7/ Bloom and Bust by Phillip Longman | The Washington Monthly 2015-11-25T01:34:30+00:00 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novemberdecember_2015/features/bloom_and_bust058470.php?page=all robertogreco us inequality urban urbanism coasts economics policy politics 1980s ronaldreagan ip intellectualproperty wages salaries states socialcapital robertputnam georgepacker trusts law legal regulation business finance philliplongman https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:eaf1dc673aa0/ Tuttle SVC: Some Post-Reform Education Theses 2015-06-11T07:25:07+00:00 http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2015/06/some-post-reform-education-theses.html robertogreco education policy us edreform schools teaching learning ap testing standardizedtesting johndewey assessment funding money memory socialcapital poverty ideology 2015 tomhoffman https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:113c465a6599/ CURMUDGUCATION: Can We Rebuild Social Capital? 2015-06-11T07:14:00+00:00 http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/06/can-we-rebuild-social-capital.html robertogreco socialcapital mikepetrilli petergreene community communities busing education schools testscores testing poverty cityheights libraries reccenters connectedness support edreform reform robertputnam society funding neighborhoods guests connection academics inequality charterschools https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f4c97fbfa1e4/ Insights: K-HOLE, New York — Insights: K-HOLE, New York — Channel — Walker Art Center 2015-03-28T08:56:16+00:00 http://www.walkerart.org/channel/2015/insights-k-hole-new-york robertogreco k-hole consumption online internet communication burnout normcore legibility illegibility simplicity technology mobile phones smartphones trends fashion art design branding brands socialmedia groupchat texting oversharing absence checkingout aesthetics lifestyle airplanemode privilege specialness generations marketing trendspotting coping messaging control socialcapital gregfong denayago personalbranding visibility invisibility identity punk prolasticity patagonia patience anxietymatrix chaos order anxiety normality abnormality youth millennials individuality box1824 hansulrichobrist alternative indie culture opposition massindie williamsburg simoncastets digitalnatives capitalism mainstream semiotics subcultures isolation 2015 walkerartcenter maxingout establishment difference 89plus basicness evasion blandness actingbasic empathy indifference eccentricity blankness tolerance rebellion signalling status coolness aspiration connections relationships presentationofself understanding territorialism sociology ne https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:83ee6e1363f6/ Porter and Mykleby: A Grand Strategy for the Nation on Vimeo 2012-02-19T22:50:51+00:00 https://vimeo.com/31205135 robertogreco grassroots complexity agriculture military socialcapital nationalstrategicnarrative policy energy us government systemsthinking markmykleby wayneporter poptech sustainability via:steelemaley https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ba59b94f4275/ The City As School - Gilberto Dimenstein - Revitalizing Cities - Harvard Business Review 2011-04-26T04:57:20+00:00 http://blogs.hbr.org/revitalizing-cities/2011/04/the-city-as-school.html robertogreco cities schools explodingschool urban infrastructure colinward education lcproject informallearning informal thecityishereforyoutouse socialcapital gilbertodinmenstein sãopaulo cityasclassroom experience experientiallearning realworld schoolwithoutwalls bolsa-escola via:cervus opencities opencitylabs networkedlearning ivanillich deschooling unschooling catracalivre neighborhoods community communities communitycenters learning families https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f09788733bfb/ Building Better Kids | Mother Jones 2011-03-21T06:08:04+00:00 http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/james-heckman-education-achievement-gap robertogreco education children poverty 2011 politics headstart parenting learning socialcapital us earlyintervention earlychildhood achievementgap https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a10cef49a4ea/ Loneliness 2009-11-12T18:06:35+00:00 http://scienceofloneliness.com/?q=homepage robertogreco loneliness society culture happiness socialcapital social books science interconnectivity interdependent human psychology sociology interconnected interconnectedness https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d9fbf26930c0/ Why social matters – Blog – BERG 2009-10-20T03:22:21+00:00 http://berglondon.com/blog/2009/10/19/why-social-matters/ robertogreco mattwebb socialnetworking health socialcapital socialmedia media software social web2.0 web berg berglondon https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ac1dd892e811/ Cosmopolitanism as a Form of Capital: Parents Preparing their Children for a Globalizing World -- Weenink 42 (6): 1089 -- Sociology 2008-12-04T02:37:30+00:00 http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/42/6/1089?etoc robertogreco education parenting global globalvillage globalism cosmopolitanism globalization socialcapital https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2fb73f68ccbc/