Blog Post: Human Systems Are Almost Always Based On Trust by Dave Pollard (2023)
Here is a summary of the key points made in the post:
– Trust is essential for human systems and organizations to function properly. Without trust, systems become dysfunctional and coercive.
– Modern society seems to thrive on exploiting distrust – through false advertising, empty political promises, conspiracy theories, censorship, and disinformation. This profitable manipulation sows distrust and dissatisfaction.
– When trust in public systems erodes, people withdraw participation and opt for private alternatives or rebel through civil disobedience. Endless coercion to maintain order becomes unsustainable.
– Collapse ensues when distrust prevents rescue of failing systems – financial, economic, political, health, education, transportation, social. This collapse has already begun in dropping labor participation rates.
– Less individualistic cultures may withstand the collapse better initially. But the lesson of history is that when systems stop serving people, those systems eventually disband as people “walk away.”
– The resulting localized, decentralized societies will likely be built on trust, or they will not thrive. Trust seems essential to human nature and re-associating in new social organizations after a collapse of the old.
– The shape of future post-collapse societies is unpredictable, but will be radically relocalized, smaller, and highly diverse – reflecting the diversity of human needs and interests. Confederations may emerge.
– The one near-certainty is that new societies arising after collapse will be founded on trust, without which there is little hope of constructive reform.
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