Reuters has posted an interesting review of a new book by Geoffrey Hosking called Trust: A History. The thesis? Apparently that trust “provides a substitute for prescience. The unchecked pursuit of self-interest can undermine trust.”
This is surely one more globalist meme: Capitalism is a fragile endeavor and only regulations, rigorously enforced by vast government enterprises, can create and nurture trust. (My paraphrase.)
Here’s a larger excerpt:
What is the glue which holds an economy together? Disciples of Adam Smith would argue that self-interest serves as the organising principle. The problem with this way of thinking is that it overlooks the fact that man is not an island unto himself. He is a social animal, who must have constant dealings with other people. Besides, according to John Maynard Keynes, it is impossible to pursue our self-interest rationally, because we don’t have enough information to make probabilistic judgments about the future. Instead, we must rely on irrational animal spirits as a spur to action.
Hosking traces the genealogy of trust from its origins in family life, where it is imbibed in infancy, through organised religion – faith and trust being closely related concepts – to its secular role in modern economic life. Throughout this progression, our capacity to trust has become ever more extensive. “The advantage of being able to trust one another,” wrote John Stuart Mill, “penetrates into every crevice and cranny of human life; the economic is perhaps the smallest part of it, yet even this is incalculable.” Or in the blunt expression of one sociologist cited by Hosking, without trust we could not get out of bed in the morning.
This post was published at The Daily Bell on November 08, 2014.
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