
The meaning of trust in the age of Airbnb - Osiris30
http://timharford.com/2016/08/the-meaning-of-trust-in-the-age-of-airbnb/
======
soneca
I remember myself thinking about examples of lack of societal trust in Brazil,
where I live, comparing to richer countries. Like european countries (Japan
also I guess) where you don't have a barrier entering the subway where it is
verified if you paid the ticket. Only randomized sample checking.

Then a relative told me a surreal example from Angola. There, public
distribution of electricity is unreliable to say the least. So everyone who
can afford has a gas fueled electric generator at home. But, in any apartment
building, instead of having a big generator, at ground level, with all
residents sharing the bill (like we have in several upper class buildings here
in Brazil); each resident has their own small generator just outside their
doors. So there is constant loud noise and constant smoke at the stairs and
elevators (and a higher individual cost).

The only reason for this (according to this relative) is lack of trust that
everybody would consistently pay their share of the common bill. There is
always several people who try to take advantage.

So, I agree with the idea that societal trust is a requirement for economic
development.

~~~
kgwgk
> Like european countries (Japan also I guess) where you don't have a barrier
> entering the subway where it is verified if you paid the ticket. Only
> randomized sample checking.

Which countries are those? My experience in subways in several European
countries and Japan is that you cannot go through the turnstiles unless you
have a ticket (well, you can jump over them, but I guess this is not what you
meant).

~~~
facepalm
In Germany there are usually no barriers to the subway.

~~~
ekianjo
In France there are.

~~~
pimlottc
In Paris, yes. In Lille, no.

~~~
ekianjo
Ok, but Paris transports way more people that Lille ever will. And if you want
to add Lyon, well it's like paris and it's the second/third city in France.

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franciscop
I have been in Japan for about 1 year and here it's taken to the extreme.

Japanese people leave the bags and phones unattended on the table to reserve
the seat while going to the other floor of the starbucks to order. Being from
Spain, this is crazy. But it does encourage better behaviour and positive
thinking.

There was a theory about broken windows, so I assume the opposite also
happens:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

~~~
kapitza
Robert Putnam's research on trust and diversity:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and_trust_within_communities)

Japan's backward immigration policies may change:

[http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/ready-
or-n...](http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/ready-or-not-japan-
on-the-way-to-becoming-a-nation-of-immigrants)

~~~
ekianjo
There is nothing really backward about Japan s emigration policies unless you
think they should be letting just anyone in.

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fatdog
Most of the examples of trusting strangers I have seen reduce to some kind of
internal notion of tribe and tribal continuity.

Conference goers are a great example population, since they are from
everywhere and have no connection other than a shared interest in the
conference proceedings, but the degree of trust among them is extremely (if
recklessly) high.

Ethnicity, or "race," is a strong indicator of trust, since what is trust but
a default line of credit you extend to someone with the belief that it will be
reciprocated.

The U.S. has an american tribe, which includes anyone who seems american
enough, and it can easily cross ethnic boundaries. A middle class black
person, or an ethnic japanese person whose family has been in america for a
few generations can become a part of a "white" trust network with only a few
words in the right accent, with the right cultural references.

People trust each other based on their shared and demonstrated perceptions of
power and authority. Belief in the same god is often enough, but barring that,
alignment to the same institutions (rule of law, english "fair play,"
property, marriage, etc) will make someone initially trustworthy.

Here, being able to code gets you a long way because it has demonstrated a
commitment to understanding, work, incremental success, among other things.

Someone who signals alignment to, or directly against those shared perceptions
and institutions will make themselves untrustworthy. If you dress like a
criminal, people will treat you like one. Similarly, if you dress like an
oppressor, people will treat you like one.

There is nothing mysterious about trust. It only becomes complicated when
untrustworthy people insist that they deserve your trust and that you are
somehow deficient for declining to extend it.

~~~
qj4714
Trust is something that I think is often taken for granted as something that
is naturally occurring, but as you say it is based on shared
culturual/religious background. The un-pc question, the uncomfortable
question, is whether diversity/immigration contributes towards lack of trust
and lack of assimilation.

~~~
fatdog
I'd say diversity and immigration are separate things. America does a good job
of assimilating immigrants into the american tribe. Diversity tends to mean
giving power to people who have for whatever reason identified as outside that
tribe, and the results are predictable.

Low trust societies with little immigration could be explained by strong local
tribal identities within it, particularly ones which supersede identifying
with shared institutions and narratives. Those tribes could be ethnic, class,
regional, linguistic, gangs, families, villages, etc.

Village identity in places like Italy and Portugal is often stronger than
national identity, mainly because their families are larger and more
connected, and their national institutions are fairly recent appearances in
those older familial narratives.

Diversity situations where you mix people from different tribes without a
convincingly powerful umbrella narrative is when you get situations like
Somalia and Mexico. They are power vacuums in which the violence continues
because nobody is able to win.

Ironically the colonial history of places like India and South Africa may be
what holds them together, as either you have someone take the reins of those
colonial institutions and manage a transition to local rule, or fight a bloody
semi-permanent conflict to resolve the power vacuum that not having them
leaves.

Diversity as we know it today, for all its ostensibly noble goals, is just an
attempt at resource redistribution from the tribe who inherited it with the
institutions that preserve it, to some people smart enough to make off with it
without too much violence. Not sure how people will react when they wake up
and notice their stuff is missing and they are now debt slaves, but until
then, kum-ba-yah.

~~~
qj4714
It's interesting that you say America has done a good job of assimilating
immigrants in light of the popularity of Trump. It seems to me the opposite is
true. To me, America is a collection of states that is fairly cohesive, but is
quickly ripped apart when politics comes up. Americans can have pleasent
conversations over sports, entertainment, and food, but anything beyond that
and the debates can get pretty hairy...

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thedevil
Fraud triangle: [http://www.acfe.com/fraud-
triangle.aspx](http://www.acfe.com/fraud-triangle.aspx)

Fraud is usually a combination of opportunity, pressure, and rationalization.
It sounds like a bad powerpoint slide, but it changed the way I think.

People are untrusting and dishonest partly because they're poor or desperate
(pressure). (edit: someone who makes 100K but can't make debt payments is also
under high pressure and a fraud risk, as is a CEO who may get fired for
missing his numbers). And reputation systems decrease opportunity, making
people more honest. And a personal touch (e.g. a walmart greeter) makes it
harder to rationalize cheating.

One thing the fraud triangle is missing though is culture/learned behavior. If
you're around other people who steal, you're more likely to think stealing is
normal. And when you've stolen in the past, your mind has also learned the
pattern of stealing and you're more likely to steal in the future.

Reputation systems plant into people's minds the patterns of trust and
honesty. Cash registers, credit reports, and star ratings have likely made
people more honest.

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dorfsmay
> Why bother to steal when you are already comfortable?

This is more important than the author makes it to be. If nobody needs to turn
to crime to eat and live, then they don't, and slowly everybody let their
guard down more and more.

Edit: I should have said theft instead of crime. Need affect theft, theft
affect trust.

~~~
geon
> If nobody needs to turn to crime to eat and live, then they don't

Provably false. Plenty of crimes are committed by well off persons.

There is probably a causality, though.

~~~
dev1n
well off persons commit very different crimes from poor people. I don't think
the author is talking about white collar crimes here.

~~~
esmi
I don't think geon was thinking of white collars crimes either. Personally, I
was thinking of domestic violence.

~~~
dorfsmay
Does domestic violence affect trust in society?

Is there less domestic violence in the U.S.A. then in Somalia?

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dazc
"Airbnb makes personal connections but uses online reviews to keep people
honest: after our stay, we reviewed our host and he reviewed us."

The host reviews you after you have reviewed him/her. This is a big
disincentive to leave a bad review, especially when you haven't already
established a good reputation for yourself.

I've used Airbnb 3 times and, if I were being honest, I wouldn't have given
any of them a good review.

~~~
codesparkle
This is incorrect. The host cannot see your review until they have left you a
review and vice versa.

~~~
dazc
Not been my experience; where someone has left a bad review they seem to have
got one back.

~~~
CardenB
Yeah because often times a bad experience is bidirectional

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omonra
I imagine the store keeper had enough experience with arab kids breaking stuff
that wasn't paid for by their parents. So it's not a call on clumsiness of one
set of kids vs another but personal experience on whether their parents can be
trusted.

Which seems to be the point of the article.

------
arjie
David Graeber in _Debt: The First 5000 Years_ posits that debt and credit
appeared before money or barter. These are things that can exist only
meaningfully in a society with some degree of trust. I haven't evaluated the
truth of this yet, but I'm firmly of the belief that high-trust societies will
be economically prosperous and that there is a feedback loop at work here that
starts with high trust enabling business and social interactions.

Like other commenters here, I'm from South Asia, and this is one of the most
significant differences I've noticed from my home country (India). No-
questions-asked return policies make my life so much easier and not having to
share the store with too many unethical people makes this possible.

------
brooklyndude
As a social experiment years ago, I interviewed 1000s of NYC taxi passengers.
Just zillions really over a few years.

My conclusion, based on my data collection (WASP here).

The most friendliest people on the planet were Pakistani. Number 2? Egyptian.

Always found that kind of interesting for a 5th generation New Yorker. Of
course your mileage my vary. But that's what I discovered. As far as I know,
no one else has ever conducted that survey, before or since.

~~~
Donzo
How did you measure friendliness?

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jguimont
This reminds me of my philosophy classes. Rousseau believed all human are
fundamentally good vs Machiavelli which thought people will act
narcissistically and you need leverage on them to make them behave.

Trust vs non trust. We vs I. The futur vs the present.

------
untilHellbanned
> “it would explain basically all the difference between the per capita income
> of the United States and Somalia”. In other words, without trust — and its
> vital complement, trustworthiness — there is no prospect of economic
> development.

Well said. It's the same problem with Bitcoin. While it is cool to think about
trustless digital currencies I think what we're seeing over the last 5 years
about probably about 20 is establishment of trust in blockchains. It's all a
human psychology thing, not about technology. It's not gonna happen overnight.
It may also never happen in the same way many countries never have gotten
their sh*t together.

~~~
adrianratnapala
This is a little backwards.

Trust might be the cause of societal wealth. But it is also an effect of the
system of laws. Americans are not more trusting/trustworthy because they are
more cuddly and friendly -- Somalis probably have and deserve more of that
kind of trust.

The kind of trust that makes America rich is the kind of trust you place in
strangers who know they are doing commerce under the rule of law. The promimse
made by Bitcoin and such is to add a new component to that sort of enforcement
-- increasing trust.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ironic that bitcoin has been subject to such corruption and crime, despite the
fundamental blockchain security.

------
kbuchanan
Trust is also an important component in a labor market: trust that an employer
will treat employees fairly, and trust that an employee will meet their
obligations.

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ilaksh
This is just another disguise for racism.

There is less trust in relatively poor countries because there is more day-to-
day crime.

There is more crime because the entire country is poor.

The country is poor because rich countries hog money and resources and use
badly disguised racism to justify it.

------
known
Trust, But Verify;

~~~
iamben
If you have to verify, it's not really trust, is it?

~~~
kstenerud
It depends on how much damage you open yourself to with your trust. People can
be counted on to be trustworthy most of the time, but not all of the time.

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awt
Trust is _cheap_. And people should be able to and _will_ trust or not trust
whoever they wish.

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sleepychu
The last example is absolutely heartbreaking. That someone would be so
comfortable being so overtly racist in front of a complete stranger who is
also a customer.

~~~
orf
She may be racist, but if in the course of her shopkeeping she sees that a
much higher portion of kids from certain backgrounds break glasses, what is
she to do? She's obviously seen more kids handle sunglasses than you or I ever
will, and she can draw whatever conclusions she likes from that sample. She
could have phrased her conclusions a little better though.

Of course she could just be a racist with a bias against minorities which she
chooses to express through the medium of sunglass handling rules.

~~~
mulligan
confirmation bias?

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miguelrochefort
The world needs a global reputation system.

This needs to keep track of every commitment, every promises. It should become
important enough that people completely stop lying. After a while, interesting
things will happen.

You will be able to let people use your car, use your house, use your tools,
use your bathroom, use your money, without having to watch them.

The workforce will become completely liquid, as you will be able to hire
people without having to test them. If they're not fit for the job, they will
quit on their own.

Sadly, those privacy enthusiasts are making everything they can to prevent
that from happening.

~~~
jtr1
Ah yes, our old friend the panopticon. If human beings are watched thoroughly
enough, eventually they will internalize the gaze and watch themselves. The
perfection of the human condition! What ever happened to those? ;)

