Trust

“When trust is absent, all kinds of societal woes unfold — including violence, social chaos and paralyzing risk-aversion.”

The Fate of Online Trust in the Next Decade
It seems like for every invention there are a million people thinking of ways to corrupt it. Maybe innovation has peaked and all we can hope for now is more innovative ways to steal, cheat, and lie. Not to take a punch at any products, but every year we are led to believe the world is going to be changed by the latest innovation of certain smartphones, only to discover they changed the camera and maybe one other feature.
Not exactly earth shattering, but I digress. The point of this post is not to talk about our lack of creativity, but rather our lack of trust. Though I do think those concepts belong together, for trust leads to progress. Trust leads to cooperation of different beliefs, which can work together to build something.

Even if individuals do not trust one another, if they can find an underlying similarity, like a desire to work in a completely transparent environment, then trust no longer acts as a hinderence and progress can flourish.
The only way for us to survive is to trust our fellow man to some capacity. For example, if trust doesn’t exist than everyone will be trying to get away with as much immoral activity as they can without being caught. More lawyers will have to sit in on meanings and look for loopholes invisible to the untrained eye, because both parties are assuming the other is looking to get away with something and will do their best to get away with as much as possible.

This is why the quote at the top stood out to me so much. A lack of trust can completely paralyze a community (both macro and micro). We are all risk averse to some capacity, some more than others. If there is no trust amongst consumers and producers, business owners and customers, even neighbors, we will be too scared to make any decisions in our life because the perceived risk will be too great and the returns will be what we consider normal today.

Look at a polarized outcome of a world where there is absolutely no trust. No friendships, or relationships beyond acquaintances because we assume any interaction is strictly to better their current situation with no care of how it affects our situation.

Going to the store becomes a calculated risk because stop signs and red lights act more as suggestions, since we cannot trust people to follow the rules. They will not trust anyone else to, or for anyone else to get punished for their actions so why should they?

Even once they get to the store they will not be able to trust the cashier to not pocket extra cash from them, since a world with no trust would not allow credit. Lenders would not trust borrowers to pay their loans back.

From the opposite side of this business transaction, businessmen and women would struggle to hire anyone out of fear of being robbed after every transaction.

They’d have to spend copious amounts of money on new security and install it themselves because customers would try to steal as much as possible.

I apologize for the rambling but you can see how this hypothetical is never ending and can always be dug a little deeper. Almost every interaction we make on a daily basis is made with some capacity of trust and the recent polarization of the country is harming that. Progress can only occur with trust and currently that is depleting at a rapid pace.