>People always want high trust societies.

Disagree. High-trust can only exist in the absence of class disparity. You're not going to steal from your neighbor if your neighbor has exactly the same things as you do. You will if he's substantially richer. At the same time, you want to be as rich yourself as possible. Can't have both though.

Countries like Japan or Singapore aren't high-trust societies, they're high-enforcement societies. That's different. In my eyes, high-trust society is a society where law enforcement isn't needed because people self-police because they value the collective, not because of fear of punishment.

A friend of mine never locks his car because he trusts that nobody will steal it even though he knows that once the car is stolen, the chance of recovery is zero because the police simply ignore such reports. This is high-trust society.