Phares Kariuki on the origins of trust in a society

One of the things that living in Switzerland caused me to appreciate is the impact of trust in society. Switzerland measures as an exceptionally high trust society.

When you live there, it’s something you can actually feel. The way I describe it to people is that in Switzerland, everywhere feels like high end American suburbs (holding aside for the moment that not everyone feels welcome in American suburbs). Things just work. You can leave your door unlocked.

I have a hypothesis that this trust is self reinforcing. Because people trust each other, additional things are possible. Because of these things, people trust the system. My example here is the Swiss Recycling system, although I’m sure someone could come up with something better.

Because of this experience, societal trust has become something I really want to better understand. Where does it come from? How can we make more of it? What destroys it?

With that background, I loved this interview between Phares Kariuki and Uri Bram. The whole thing is worth reading, but Phares offers two hypothesis about what creates trust and one about what destroys trust.

Trust creator #1: Violence

How you move from one equilibrium to another, from observation seems to be violence. It is cruel to think about but Europe went through countless wars in order to integrate.

Trust creator #2: Contract enforcement

The primary thing that can be done to increase trust in society is to have a level of justice for crime / breach of contract. This enforces good behaviour and dissuades bad behaviour; places with high trust have the highest rates of contract enforcement but also contracts aren't needed -- folks can shake on it.

Trust destroyer: Foreign interference

Phares Kariuki: Additionally, I've seen high trust societies get decimated by foreign interference (Korea, Somalia, Germany).

Uri Bram: I’d love to hear more about the Somalia example -- I think some people reading this might be surprised to hear it had a previous high-trust phase.

Phares Kariuki: The Somali were one people, largely Sunni. Their territory covered part of Eastern Ethiopia, North Eastern Kenya. They were split into multiple countries during the colonial era, with Kenya famously oppressing them during the Shifta wars of the 70s. They wanted to secede. The interference in their leadership due to the Cold War led to oppression and clan based mistrust; the fallout stands until today.