There's always someone trying to scam you

...and I'm really sick of it. Someone you didn't expect knocks on your door, and it's likely to be some sort of scam. Almost every ad scams you in some way: the car isn't that cheap, the yoghurt does not improve your gut health, those cereals out of all things won't make you lose weight. You walk on the streets, someone comes to you begging for money, it's likely a sort of scam operated by some begging mafia. You receive a phone call, it's always a god-damned scam, AI-powered, even. You learn about a new cryptocurrency? Odds are, it's a scam.

Goodheart's Law states that when a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure. Money is, or was at the origins, a measure of social utility¹, of how much people around you owe you (money is debt). But when money is the goal, then everything goes to get more of it. This is why scams exist. It's not because there are lots of ontologically evil people around, but because having lots of money is a goal.

So yeah, as long as money-making is a goal, there will be scamming, and we will live in a low-trust society. The best way to combat low trust, it follows, it to make it unfashionable to be rich, so it ceases to be a goal.