My kids are not that old, so it hasn't come to a head yet. I presume you're talking about school performance - particularly closer to high school?

At the same time, we may need to adjust our baseline on what we call "opportunities".

I've lived in other countries, and one of the nice things about the US is how uncompetitive school is. One could (and likely still can) get into a decent "average" university without much difficulty. In other countries, not so. You could be in the top 10% academically and end up in a really low quality university. I would understand playing such games there.

The US.

Come on, let's be serious. Most Stanford undergraduate courses aren't that tough, grade inflation is rampant, and almost anyone who gets admitted can probably graduate regardless of accommodations or lack thereof. We're talking about the difference between getting an A or A- here. And Stanford has such generous financial aid that students from families earning less than $150K get free tuition so no one should be leaving with huge student debts.

> Most people in the US are probably aware one healthcare or legal issue in their family will derail the whole family’s future.

Healthcare sure, but for Americans, it is culturally and institutionally seen as a core part of justice that the guilty have their future destroyed. That it affects those dependent on the guilty is a part of that destruction, it's trying to isolate them from others. If you still have your family around, has your life truly been destroyed? Among American people it might not be universal, and may seem absolutely barbaric, but the extreme malignance of American justice is more or less consistent with a wide swath of attitudes Americans have, especially when they're the ones who have been severely harmed.

some disabilities have mostly lost their stigma, sure, in some places.

Many have not. Most have not, if you consider the whole world and not just California and Washington or whatever.

>If you're saying that people always try to game the system, whatever it is, then I agree however.

This isn't even true either. In the past there was a huge emphasis and effort made toward character. Going out of your way to do the right thing and be helpful and NOT getting special treatment but choosing the difficult path.

Now everything is the opposite it's about getting as much special treatment as possible and shirking as much responsibility and this isn't just people it's throughout the corporate and political system as well.

I can tell you from personal experience as a person with a physical disability that it's still very much a stigma.

It's also very much possible for something to be both a stigma and an identity. In fact, the stigmatization can make the identity stronger.

I just bumped into the idea of "demographic diversity" versus "moral diversity" [1].

Demographic diversity speaks to the differences in sex, race, sexual orientation, etc. A nation of immigrants, for example.

Moral diversity speaks to the differences in culture, the rules a society follows. Erosion of those rules is what leads to a low trust society.

I thought this was a really interesting distinction to make.

It seems that the U.S. is not as high trust as it was 75+ years ago. The book I read used the example of neighbors disciplining children, which was more common in U.S. culture 75+ years ago. Today you'd worry about a parent calling the police for that. In general the idea of character has replaced with personality. Moral diversity. Live and let live.

But on the other hand 75+ years ago women and minorities were more limited. We now have more demographic diversity. Which is a good thing.

I would like to think that demographic diversity and a high trust society aren't mutually exclusive. Conflating the two doesn't help.

[1] The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt, Chapter 8, The Felicity of Virtue

Look here: https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on...

> American society is high trust and diverse

Would note that this is almost a prerequisite for great societies. Small and homogenous, or powerful and diverse. There really isn't a middle course.

Rome. China. Britain. Each had empires that were remarkably diverse for their time. (Rome, perhaps, most of all.)

There are also cultures that aren't very diverse that are pretty high-trust: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Japan, even China.

Which goes to say, diversity likely has very little to do with whether a society is low-trust or high-trust. It's more about politics and policy.

I think the user you replied to is referring to things like the Putnam findings on the effects of diversity https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FvFN8ACY6taivkcbzDGgYy1-EPb...