Marek Kohn - Trust: Self-Interest and the Common Good

TRUST

S E L F - I N T E R E S T A N D

T H E C O M M O N G O O D

EEE

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Trust

S E L F - I N T E R E S T A N D

T H E C O M M O N G O O D

E

Marek Kohn

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

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Marek Kohn 2008

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First published 2008

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ISBN 9780199217915

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain

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CONTENTS

Preface vii

chapter 1

Just Going Round to the Shop 1

chapter 2

Trust from the Barrel of a Gun 23

chapter 3

Reason to Believe 40

chapter 4

In God We Trust 58

chapter 5

Through Thick and Thin 75

chapter 6

The Goodwill of the People 98

chapter 7

Leaving the Door Unlocked 118

Notes 134

Further Reading 139

Bibliography 140

Index 147

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PREFACE

Now that agreement has been reached about how humankind can best make a profitable living, with a single economic orthodoxy established around the world, an increasing number of scholars and commentators have turned their attention to the question of how people can live well. Recognizing that beyond a certain level of material security, money delivers diminishing returns, they reflect on what really makes life rewarding, and what makes a society good, rather than merely prosperous. They write about qualities like community, status, respect, and happiness. Trust is one of these qualities. Like its companions, it is fundamental to a fulfilling life and a good society.

This short book is intended as a contribution to the growing discussion about these precious, and elusive, qualities of life.

It is not a survey of the literature in the academic sense, nor a pocket textbook, nor even a primer, but an essay that responds to a rich array of knowledge and ideas. I have been intrigued, challenged, and inspired by what I have read in researching it: I have written it in a way that I hope will evoke similar responses from its readers.

It starts with individuals and moves on to nations. The terrain is sketched out in Chapter 1 with an everyday scene that illustrates the main personal and public dimensions of trust.

This opens up an introductory discussion about what trust is, viii

preface

what it feels like, and what conditions are required for it to develop.

The argument then re-starts in Chapter 2 from first principles, asking how cooperation can evolve among organisms or other agents pursuing their individual interests. Discussing some of the answers to this question that have been obtained by the application of game theory, it describes a remarkable example of real-life games played by soldiers across enemy lines in the First World War. Chapter 3 also begins with evolutionary theory, considering the problem of how signals produced by self-interested organisms can be reliable, and ends with a philosophical discussion of whether trust can be rational.

In Chapter 4 the relationship between authority and trust is examined, describing the course taken from traditional authority to modernity. Starting with a discussion of trust in gods, the account goes on to examine how people have sought to invest their trust as the power of religious faith and associated traditions has diminished. Although trust is extensive in the experts who create the systems through which much of modern life is lived, it is far from perfect, and is compromised by undercurrents of distrust in institutions.

Chapter 5 then considers trust in society, or its absence, the effect of low social trust on economic development, and the idea of social capital. It reflects on the polarization of trust between mutually antagonistic communities, each warming itself by the flames of its hostility to the other, and on trust in districts shared by members of diverse groups. The relationship between social trust and peoples trust in political preface

ix

institutions is discussed in Chapter 6. Communist totalitari-anism relied on distrust, and devoted much of its energy to orchestrating it among its subjects. Liberal democracy is also based on distrust, but in the opposite direction: it is founded upon the suspicion that the powerful will be tempted to abuse their power, and so must be subject to checks and balances.

Among its citizens distrust is endemic, but only to the point of complacency.

This theme is concluded in Chapter 7, which points out some of the weaknesses of the idea of generalized trust, while affirming that it expresses a quality that is fundamentally important to a good society. The chapter and the book then end with reflections on the place of trust in a world that is in constant flux, spinning ever faster, compulsively initiating, revising, rearranging, and discarding its relationships.

E

I am most grateful to Latha Menon for commissioning and editing this book; to Charles Lauder Jr, Eva Nyika, and James Thompson for helping to realize it; to Andrew Brown, Christine DeBlase, Gavin Keulks, David Skinner, and John Street for advice and assistance of various kinds; and to three anonymous readers for their very helpful comments on the original proposal.

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JUST GOING ROUND TO THE SHOP

Thekitchenisinfullsteam;panshissandspoons

clatter, plates are slapped onto trays and sauces mar-shalled; the parent animating all these objects leans across and opens the breadbinwhich, being empty, stops the cavalcade in its tracks. She steps out to reach for her coat, then pauses again; instead, she calls to summon her child, causing a hiatus in another sphere of activity, whose clattering, mar-shalling, and animating constitute the equally busy domain of play. She hands him some coins and sends him out, down the street and across the road to the shops. Within a few minutes he returns, carrying a loaf; behind in the shop he has left the payment and a recorded video image of himself. In this brief and everyday episode, the two of them have negotiated or touched upon most of the basic dimensions of trust.