Social Trust: It’s Not Warm and Fuzzy, It’s the Money, Honey
That most of us live in a low-value, low-trust economy of shoddy goods and services hidden beneath high-tech frictionless, faceless transactions is not recognized.
Social trust manifests in all sorts of ways, and it’s often amorphous and difficult to measure. We sense its presence or absence, but exactly what is it? Is it our trust in strangers, or our trust in institutions, or a warm and fuzzy feeling that our society isn’t falling apart?
In several critical ways, social trust isn’t warm and fuzzy, it’s all about the money, honey. In high-trust societies, transactions are frictionless and low-cost. In low-trust societies, transactions must go through multiple levels of verification, trusted third-parties, etc., each of which is costly.
Correspondent Bruce H. illuminates the differences between high-trust and low-trust transactions:
“There must be a high degree of social trust in order to make business transactions. If you think the other person is likely to take the goods and not pay, you are not likely to engage as freely, and the “shadow work”
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.