Who can we trust?
This is a fundamental question in life. One that permeates from the board room to the dining room.
Trust is perhaps the most critical element for productive relationships. Yet, it’s both as difficult to obtain and as easy to destroy as fine china. And when trust is broken, it’s as if the knife’s being twisted in our back.
So, we do what we can to protect ourselves from this outcome. When encountering new people, we toggle our trust switch to Off by default. We indicate trust must first be earned, and then be kept.
This indication runs both ways. It requires that we prove our worth to others. And that others prove their worth to us.
We implicitly understand this construct on an individual level. But what about on a wider scale? Can we implicitly trust the systems and constructs our society has built?
Seth Godin says no.
The marketing guru recently penned an article decrying unbridled capitalism. Godin claimed that capitalist utopias can’t exist because people can’t be trusted. That without regulation, the free market system will fail. And that it will fail because it’s human nature for those with unfettered power to unethically exploit those without it.
I’m a huge fan of Seth Godin. I read his blog voraciously and I take his sage advice to heart. I even model my Words of the West articles after his.
But I must admit that Seth is wrong in this instance.
Why? Because he directly implies that people can’t be trustworthy. That without someone watching over our shoulders, our natural instinct is to hurt others.
I find that description upsetting. In part because it kowtows to the wave of divisiveness engulfing our society. And in part because it indicates that we have no free will.
You see, it is true that without anyone lording over a capitalist society, some bad apples would do all they could to exploit others. Heck, these bad actors would probably do this without any remorse.
But would all of us do this by default? No flipping way!
Most of us do have an intact moral compass. We know where True North is, and we are committed to following it.
We learn about right and wrong early in life. And we learn about the fragility of trust through the connections we build with others as we mature.
These principles can help us stay ethical, even when no one’s watching. After all, we recognize that the Golden Rule is still in effect.
To dismiss this behavior as a byproduct of regulation is just plain wrong. It completely discounts the goodness inherent within us.
With that said, here’s what I believe:
I believe the system deserves our trust.
I believe humanity deserves the benefit of the doubt.
And I believe that a free market system is more beneficial than one saddled by regulations.
Most of all, I believe that we need to trust in something in order to trust in each other. So why not trust in a system our own society has built? One that speaks to the inherent goodness within us.
The system works. Trust it.