And most people dramatically underestimate what a death sentence a low trust society is for economic development.

Countries that allow a culture of scamming are all poor because a low trust society will never develop into a first world economy.

Trust and property rights are the basis of all development and investment and human collaboration.

Which is why it’s so depressing to see the U.S. backslide into this so quickly and willfully.

Honestly, I don't think it's been fast. We're just in the final phases. It's been building for decades. Venerating making money over all else and justifying anything as long as it's profitable and you get away with it has been going on for a while. Everyone sees the very wealthy and politically connected getting away with crimes and things that should be crimes, and that culture of money above all spreads.

Corruption starts at the top, but eventually it's everywhere.

For today's whataboutism: billions of people live in cultures where buying the best-priced product and not noticing or ignoring the slave labour or environmental costs in the production chain is perfectly moral.

E.g. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-merchant-iphone-...

There's also a lack of outrage of how our trash gets exported. It's the phone producer or the trash-people's crooked morals, not ours.. ;-)