How to Navigate Our Low-Trust, Increasingly Dysfunctional Society and Economy

Politicians and corporate managers have an enviable record of self-enrichment but very little to show in terms of putting the long-term interests of the citizenry above their own.

This week's focus is on self-reliance, a topic of increasing relevance than is more complex that it may seem.

Sociologists differentiate between high-trust and low-trust societies: in high-trust social orders, citizens tend to trust institutions and each other to conform to social norms, enabling strangers to trust a vast circle of transactions and socio…