“Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.” – Democritus.
Over the last twenty years online person-to-person communication has become a true mass medium. Initially, it was thought that the Internet’s technical architecture need not address issues such trust, since those matters tended to take care of themselves: “Early users of the Net could, with some assurance, feel they shared affinities with others they met online. The small size of the community, and the intensity of connections between those who participated, created an environment in which you were encouraged to act responsibly in order to protect your personal reputation. We knew who to trust” – Ken Jordon, ‘The Augmented Social Network’.
However, as the online social network grew from a few hundred people to the many millions of participants representing different and overlapping social networks, the ability to identify affinities and establish trust through the Internet disintegrated. Now growing in the space where trust previously existed is distrust – trust is in decline:
“In one longitudinal survey, Americans were asked whether they felt most people could be trusted. The number answering affirmatively fell from 58% in 1960 to 37% in 1993. Apart from opinion surveys, the decline of social trust is evident on both sides of the law, in both the rise of crime and civil litigation.” – Francis Fukiyama, ‘Trust.’
In their 2019 book ‘Radical Markets’, authors Posner & Weyl wrote: “The cultural consequences of capitalism have not all been for the better… by reducing so much of the social exchange to impersonal monetary terms, markets undermine the close connections that people feel toward those they know closely and interact with on a daily basis. By supplanting the moral values upon which communities are founded with the pursuit of personal ambition and profit, markets tend to reduce social solidarity and undermine the trust that is necessary for markets to function.”
And, according to the 2024 The Edelman Trust Barometer, distrust is growing as authority declines. Illustrated in the chart below, global governments are now seen as both far less competent and far less ethical than businesses.
Why should you care that distrust is growing? Because society is built on trust and, unfortunately, “Corruption, moral decline, and inefficiency appear to be signal features of the final stages of a system.” – Davidson & Rees-Mogg, ‘The Sovereign Individual’.
Trust has been the natural glue of human connection since the beginning of Man, and “communities are united by trust”, as said by Francis Fukiyama. And, from Cynthia Typaldos we have: “Without trust, a collaborative group cannot function. Trust is built over time and must be earned. Sociologists have researched trust in groups extensively and have identified that multiple positive interactions, comprehensive understanding of the individual’s identity, and concurring opinions of other trustworthy members are key to gaining trust in other people. Building trust increases group efficiency and enables conflict resolution – Trust is the social lubricant that makes community possible.”
Thanks for reading!