I disagree…

David Harbour said something in an interview about American culture being too binary: either you’re alone, or you retreat into the nuclear family and shut out everyone else. He’s pointing at something real, and I don’t think he’s a communist. I think he’s describing a high trust society and misnaming the cause.

You don’t get neighbors who look out for each other by wanting it. You get it when individual households are handling their business, which is exactly what the nuclear family produced and what America moved away from. Nobody watches your house while you’re out of town because they love humanity. They do it because there’s trust, and trust is built by people taking care of their own castle first.

Plus a definition worth getting right, because the word is getting thrown around a lot lately, and the late Dr. Walter E. Williams’ potato example, which explains market exchange better than any lecture I’ve heard: Idaho farmers didn’t ship potatoes because they cared whether New Yorkers ate. Everybody won anyway.