Our Manifesto: Why Trust Matters
Published on 19 Oct 2025
35 min read
by Leonardo Lemos
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Picture this: You're at a restaurant in London or Vancouver. The bill arrives. You hand over your credit card. The server takes it away, processes the payment, and returns it. You never think twice.
Now imagine doing this in São Paulo, Mexico City, or Karachi. The server disappearing with your credit card? Unthinkable. Instead, they bring a payment terminal to your table. You maintain physical control at every moment.
I know this intimately. I was born in Brazil. This seemingly small difference (who holds the card) reveals something profound about how societies function. It's not about paranoia. It's about rational adaption to different levels of social trust.
And this trust is the invisible foundation upon which prosperity is built.
High-trust societies such as the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the United States didn't achieve their prosperity by chance. They developed something rare and precious: the ability to trust strangers. To cooperate with people you've never met. To believe that others will honour their commitments without constant monitoring.
The data is stark. When asked "generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?":
This isn't just a number. The seven-times difference in trust rates translates directly into economic reality. High-trust societies enjoy 20-30% lower transaction costs. You can leave your laptop in a library. Contracts can be shorter. Business moves faster. Public services function better.
Low-trust societies pay an invisible tax on everything. Every transaction needs elaborate security. Every agreement requires extensive verification. Family businesses dominate because trust doesn't extend beyond kingship networks. Economic potential remains forever constrained.
Here's what should alarm everyone who values Western prosperity: trust is collapsing even in historically high-trust societies.
The United States tells the story clearly:
The UK experienced a 10-percentage-point drop in government trust in just two years (2021-2023). Canada's trust in government plummeted from 58% to 43% between 2020-2022, a 15-point collapse in 24 months.
Most concerning: Young people trust far less than older generations.
In Sweden, only 53% of under-30s trust others versus 77% of those over 50. In the United States, Gen Z shows institutional trust below 15% for Congress, media, and the presidency. This pattern repeats across every developed nation surveyed.
Each generation is less trusting than the one before. The trajectory is clear and troubling.
Social media has accelerated polarisation dramatically. NYU's review of 50+ studies found social media "exacerbates" division through algorithm amplification. We unknowningly sort ourselves into isolated networks, consuming information that confirms existing beliefs whilst avoiding uncomfortable truths.
Economic inequality erodes the shared experience that builds trust. When societies fracture into distinct economic classes, people trust only those similar to themselves. The middle ground, where different groups once mixed, disappears.
Political polarisation both causes and reflects trust decline. When citizens view the opposing party as "a danger to the country," cooperation becomes impossible. Shared facts disappear. Everything becomes tribal.
The result? Robert Putnam documented this in "Bowling Alone:" Americans have withdrawn from civic life. Volunteering fell from 28.8% in 2002-2005 to just 23.2% by 2021, the lowest in nearby two decades. We no longer join clubs. We don't attend public meetings. We bowl alone rather than in leagues.
The fabric is fraying.
Only 7% of Brazilians believe most people can be trusted, among the five lowest trust rates globally.
I've lived this reality. The consequences extend far beyond credit card practices:
In payments: Mexico still processes 80% of transactions in cash despite widespread banking access. Brazil needed its government to create Pix, a domestic instant payment system, because Brazilian trust neither foreign nor domestic credit card companies enough to adopt digital payments.
In business: Companies must invest heavily in security, verification systems, and monitoring. These resources cannot be used productively. Estimates suggest this "trust tax" reduces growth potential by 20-30%.
In daily life: Over 40% of Brazilian workers remain in the informal sector, partly because they distrust formal institutions and outdated labour laws. Tax evasion becomes widespread when citizens believe the government will waste or steal their contributions, which is true in recent history.
The historical roots run deep. Brazil inherited extractive colonial institutions designed for exploitation rather than development. Slavery, lasting until 1888, last in the Americas, created rigid social hierarchies. Academic research shows regions with historically high slavery levels exhibit 18% lower trust today. The trauma transmits across generations since the slavery's end, which was also the cause of the end of the Brazilian Empire.
The military dictatorship (1964-1985) further damaged institutional trust through 21 years of repression. Then came Lavo Jato, the Car Wash corruption scandal, which initially seemed to promise accountability but ultimately revealed corruption across the entire political spectrum. When the investigation itself became politicised, Brazilians learnt a bitter lesson: you need to be blind to corruption to survive, or you can't trust anyone.
The result is a term I personally hate, "jeitinho brasileiro," or the culture practice of creatively bending rules. Whilst sometimes celebrated as 'resourcefulness,' jeitinho perpetuates distrust. When everyone expects others to circumvent rules through personal connections, formal institutions become irrelevant. Trust concentrates within families and close networks. Everyone outside that circle is suspect.
This is the low-trust equilibrium. And it's extraordinarily difficult to escape.
Nowhere does trust matter more than in romantic partnerships. Yet even here, we see the pattern repeating: trust is declining, and the consequences are severe.
Money is the most dangerous topic in relationships. Kansas State University research analysing over 4,500 couples found financial arguments are strongest predictor of divorce, stronger than disagreements about children, sex, or in-laws. THis holds true across all income levels.
The data reveals why:
Financial secrecy poisons relationships systematically. Research shows 43% of Americans who have ever combined finances admit to financial deception, hiding purchases, accounts, debt, or income. Among those who commit financial infidelity, 85% say it affected the relationship: 42% caused arguments, 32% led to less trust, 16% led to separate or divorce.
Gen Z shows 67% financial infidelity rates. Millennials: 54%. Gen X: 33%. Baby Boomers: 30%.
The youngest generations, digital natives who should find transparency easiest, instead exhibit the highest rates of financial dishonesty with partners.
Joint financial management predicts relationship success. Couples with joint savings accounts report 94% marital satisfaction versus just 82% with only personal accounts. Multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm this correlation. Most compellingly, experimental evidence from Northwestern University shows causation: newlyweds randomly assigned to joint accounts maintained relationship quality over two years whilst those with separate accounts showed significant declines.
Yet modern couples increasingly keep finances separate. Only 16% of cohabiting couples share accounts versus 77% of married couples. Millennials and Gen Z are making financial choices that predictably undermine relationship stability.
The parallel to societal trust is exact: Just as societies need to trust strangers for economic prosperity, couples need to trust partners for relationship success. Both are declining simultaneously.
These nations represent something precious and rare in human history: societies where strangers cooperate reliably, where institutions function with relative integrity, where you can hand your credit card to a server without fear.
This didn't happen by accident. It emerged from:
Francis Fukuyama called this "spontaneous sociability," the ability to form new associations and cooperate based on shared ethical values rather than contracts or kingship. This enables large professionally managed enterprises, efficient markets, and effective public goods provision.
But spontaneous sociability is fragile. Once lost, it takes generations to rebuild, if it can be build at all.
Brazil's experience shows how quickly trust can collapse. Argentina, once among the world' wealthiest nations in the early 20th century, demonstrates how institutional failure can squander enormous natural advantages. The pattern repeats across Latin America: natural resources, young populations, strategic locations, but constrained prosperity because trust never developed.
The West cannot assume its trust culture is permanent. The data shows it's already eroding rapidly. Each generation trusts less than the previous one. Social media fragments shared reality. Inequality creates distinct lived experiences. Political polarisation destroys common ground.
If trust continues declining in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the US, they will converge towards Brazil's reality rather than Brazil converging towards theirs.
I believe trust in society starts with trust in our most intimate relationships. If couples cannot be transparent about money, if they hide accounts, lie about debt, maintain fully separate financial lives whilst claiming partnership, how can we expect broader social trust?
Modern relationships aren't static. They evolve through stages:
Yet banking forces a binary choice: fully separate (manual splitting, constant friction, endless spreadsheets) or fully joint (all-or-nothing, complete loss of autonomy and privacy.)
Real relationships live in the middle. They need progressive financial integration that grows with trust.
We're building the first relationship-centred financial platform designed to evolve with couples, protecting and promoting trust at society's core foundation.
Our principles:
Trust through transparency: Progressive disclosure that lets partners share what they're comfortable with, when they're comfortable with it. Account linking. Fair-split algorithms. Joint savings goals. But always with boundaries that partners control.
Trust through fairness: Income-proportional splits. Equal percentage contributions. Shared decision-making. No partner feels exploited or controlled.
Trust through evolution: Financial integration that starts small (one shared bill) and grows as relationships deepen. From roommates to long-term partners to marriage, plan/ria adapts.
Trust through privacy: Some finances remain private because healthy relationships include autonomy. plan/ria never forces total merger unless couples choose it together.
Trust through simplicity: Open Banking makes it automatic. No more awkward conversations about who pays what. No more spreadsheet maintenance. NO more financial friction destroying connections.
We're starting in the UK because:
And I, personally, have always seen myself aligned with the United Kingdom's rich culture and history. And no other place on this Earth has the founding heritage of the United Kingdom, nor the values of the United Kingdom, and what it brought to the world across the centuries.
This is a historic mission. A mission to rebuild trust in the West, a mission to rebuild trust in the world. A mission to rebuild trust in humanity. There are two ways to perform this sort of mission: by being a government, or by being a company. And, as we're not in Downing Street, we're going to build a company.
To couples: Choose transparency. Choose fairness. Choose progressive trust-building over binary extremes. Your financial relationship shapes your romantic relationship. Handle it with the care it deserves.
To citizens of high-trust societies: Recognise what you have. Appreciate it. Protect it. The ability to trust strangers, to cooperate effortlessly, to hand over your credit card without fear; these aren't universal human experiences. They're achievements of centuries of human cooperation and advancement. They're under threat. They're worth defending.
To those from low-trust societies who now live in the West: You know both worlds. You understand what's at stake. Help protect the trust culture that welcomed you. Don't let these countries slide towards the distrust you left behind.
Two paths diverge:
Path one: Trust continues eroding. Political polarisation intensifies. Social media fragments shared reality. Economic inequality increases. Young people trust less with each generation. Financial secrecy in relationships become normal. Civic participation declines further. Eventually, the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the US start resembling Brazil, high-income but low-trust, wealthy in resources but poor in social capital, economically developed but culturally fractured.
Path two: We recognise trust as infrastructure requiring active maintenance. We build institutions that promote transparency rather than secrecy. We create financial tools that help couples build trust progressively. We address inequality that destroys shared experience. We reform social media that amplifies division. We strengthen civic institutions that connect strangers. We pass down trust culture to the next generation intact, if not better.
plan/ria is one small contribution to path two. We cannot solve trust erosion alone. But we can help couples, the fundamental social unit, build the transparent, fair, adaptive financial relationships that model trust for society.
Because trust begins at home. In the decision to share an account. In the conversation about a purchase. In the choice between secrecy and transparency. In the progressive revelation that says: I trust you more today than yesterday.
These small acts, repeated across millions of relationships, create the social capital that enables prosperity.
The alternative is a society where everyone brings the payment terminal to your table. Where every transaction requires elaborate verification. Where strangers never cooperate. Where prosperity remains forever constrained.
We've seen that world. In Brazil. In Mexico. In Pakistan. In every low-trust society.
We refuse to let it become the future of the West.
Join us.
Leonardo Lemos, or simply Leo, broke into the tech industry at the age of 16, and since then, he has been building products and services for startups and enterprises in highly regulated industries, such as finances, transportation, AI, and more. He is a software engineer expert in User Experience, lover of software architecture, CEO, and founder of plan/ria.
He also writes on his personal blog about his experience and insights into the tech industry.
He is a history lover, especially when it comes to British, Canadian, Portuguese, and Spanish history. His favourite place in the world is London, or precisely the Westminster Abbey (but York is a very close second.)
Leo is a Chelsea fan (Go Blues!)
Reach out to him at leo@planria.com or on LinkedIn.