The end of high-trust society

Rioting and mass looting broke out across Philadelphia last week after murder charges were dismissed in the case of a white police officer who shot an armed Hispanic suspect during a routine traffic stop. The incident was ruled as a justified shooting after bodycam footage showed Eddie Irizarry producing a weapon and pointing it at officers during the stop. The weapon turned out to be a knife, not a gun.

A swarm of criminals used the dismissal as a pretext to smash and loot Apple, Foot Locker, and Lululemon stores along with many other businesses during the two nights of unrest. A social media influencer called “Meatball” livestreamed the riots on Instagram as she encouraged looters to steal iPhones in the name of racial justice.

Although police eventually caught up with Meatball and have arrested at least 72 people in the aftermath, most of the looters will face few if any consequences for their actions. This kind of violence and theft has become a regular feature of life in American cities, and major retailers are responding by closing stores and fleeing to safer areas. Municipal governments are increasingly unable to maintain order due to highly racialized politics, and this failure will bring about the end of our high-trust society.

Civilization is a funny thing. When social cooperation is high and everything is working properly, the people barely take notice. But when the interdependent structures that allow for seamless operation start to fall apart, it suddenly becomes clear what everyone took for granted.

In a high-trust society, valuable items can sit openly on store shelves because the vast majority of shoppers will pay for them rather than steal them. Shopping carts can be left for use outside a store because most customers will return them rather than run off with them at the first opportunity. Public transit can make movement throughout the city effortless because most commuters will keep the cars clean, stand in orderly lines, and not hop the turnstile for a free ride.

A high-trust society can operate with remarkable efficiency because the people enforce the rules on themselves. No ugly and intrusive security measures are necessary, no superfluous and silly safety devices are required, because common social customs and expectations of the people guard against delinquent behavior far more effectively than any draconian top-down enforcement.

When the social norms that allow for day-to-day cooperation break down, life becomes inconvenient in little ways at first, but if the slide is not arrested, eventually the entire system falls apart.

Stores begin by placing small anti-theft tags on items that are frequently stolen, but as shoplifting escalates, those items are placed in cases that must be manually unlocked by employees. Videos now frequently appear on social media displaying stores in major cities where almost every single item, even inexpensive products like mustard and toothpaste, must be kept in locked cases due to the extreme amount of shoplifting. Some grocery stores in San Francisco, where shoplifting essentially has been decriminalized, have resorted to chaining up the doors of their freezers to stop homeless drug users from emptying them. Of course, none of these cumbersome security features really stops large-scale theft when rioting and looting occur.

The impact on the local population in these areas is obvious. On top of the physical danger, shopping in these areas becomes incredibly inconvenient and time-consuming, as employees must unlock each item the customer intends to purchase. The employees and customers begin to ask themselves if they are suckers for putting in a hard day’s work and abiding by the law while criminals routinely steal whatever they can with little consequence. Eventually, major companies realize that there simply is no way to operate at a profit or provide a safe environment for their customers and staff, and they shut down operations.

In recent months, CVS, one of the chains hardest hit by the increase in thefts, has announced plans to close 900 stores by 2024 as part of a strategy to curtail losses due to shoplifting. Its rival Walgreens also plans to close 150 stores, and Target has announced that it will close several stores in major American cities due to violence and larceny.

In response, progressives lament the rise of “food deserts” in the wake of major retailers leaving dangerous and unprofitable areas. When the major retailers leave, only smaller markets — usually stores filled with junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes — are willing to take the risk of serving the community. The left loves to blame this phenomenon on racism or capitalist greed, but the truth is that the situation was manufactured through the policies of the very same political actors who complain about those policies’ inevitable consequences.

Crime is part of the human condition. It will always be with us to some degree, but reliable solutions for reducing its severity are well known. When small violations of the law are allowed to go unpunished, criminals are emboldened and escalate their behavior. Ordinary people who would naturally abide by the law see criminals prosper without consequence and conclude it is foolish to follow the rules. “Broken windows” policing was not some new revolution in law enforcement; it was the rediscovery of one of the most basic truths of human organization. A population will mostly self-regulate if order is the norm, but the more that delinquency is excused or rewarded, the faster things will spiral out of control.

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