While this is definitely true (I've worked in both kinds of environments), I think the scrum process isn't for low-trust per se, but for managing expectations, especially if you have a larger IT organization. Your direct product owner needs a way to determine how long the development of features can be done, so that they can coordinate and manage expectations with other product owners and other stakeholders (management, customers, etc). I see it as a way to abstract away the individual developers and dev work.
And you probably know that there's a BIG portion of developers who aren't as self-organized or disciplined. You mentioned the shiny things distractions, I think that was a factor in the original post. The other being mismanagement on the agency's side, where they allowed their designers to go out of scope. And I'm not even convinced it's mismanagement, because they turned a $7K project into a $46K project, a 6.5x increase in their revenue off of some small side project.
And you probably know that there's a BIG portion of developers who aren't as self-organized or disciplined. You mentioned the shiny things distractions, I think that was a factor in the original post. The other being mismanagement on the agency's side, where they allowed their designers to go out of scope. And I'm not even convinced it's mismanagement, because they turned a $7K project into a $46K project, a 6.5x increase in their revenue off of some small side project.