Trust: Self-Interest and the Common Good

By Marek Kohn

Book Overview

Trust--whether between parents and children, merchants and shoppers, banks and investors, or citizens and their government--lies at the very heart of our relationships, our society, and our everyday lives.
This vividly written compact book reveals how modern thinkers--scientists, social scientists, and philosophers--have shed much light on the nature of trust. Beginning with some fascinating evolutionary puzzles about the origins of trust--for instance, how cooperation can evolve among individuals pursuing their own selfish interests--Marek Kohn incorporates many different perspectives from the fields of science, sociology, economics, and politics, to draw out the wider implications of trust in human society today. The book discusses trust in gods and how people have sought to reinvest this trust as religious faith has diminished; the effect of low social trust on economic development; and the loss of trust between mutually antagonistic communities, each warming itself by the flames of its hostility to the other. He shows how Communism relied on distrust, and devoted much of its energy to seeding it among its subjects, and Liberal democracy is also based on distrust, but in the opposite direction: it is founded upon the suspicion that the powerful will be tempted to abuse their power, and so must be subject to checks and balances. Perhaps most important, he shows that if we understand what makes trust possible, and why it matters, then we will live better lives in a fast-moving, fast-changing, global society.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199217920
• ISBN13: 9780199217922
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Trust Provides Advantages That Those Who Are Far from the Scene Dispute

Trust covers a lot of ground well in very few words and with limited examples. From Game Theory, the book explores themes around the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma problem (if neither prisoner tells on the other, both do well; if only one tells, that prisoner has an advantage; if both tell, they are worse off than by having both remain silent), the informal truces that occurred along the front lines of World War One's trench warfare, observations about behavior in an altruism game, Christianity, and discussions of national trust and performance. For contrast, discussions of animal behavior and various other writings on the subject are included. There are no panaceas and few conclusions. This book will primarily appeal to you if you want to learn about what is already known and would then like to pose and explore new questions. The writing level is perfect for someone taking an introductory college course on the subject. As a result, those with a casual interest in the subject will rewarded without too much strain from their reading. As an extension to the book's subject, I suggest that you also read Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business and Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies to get a sense of what can be done with more cooperation based on trust. Enjoy!

Trust and Verify

Trust, like love, is easy to recognize but difficult to define. In this very good short book Kohn takes a short word and hold it up for examination in all kinds of different lights. Trust is hard to build and easy to destroy. It is personal and universal. It appears to be genetic and is yet also learned. A couple of teaser ideas to make you want to read this book: Suicide bombers are an attack on trust. The United States was created on a principle of distrust in government. If you want to think about why we sometimes trust and sometimes don't trust read Trust by Marek Kohn.

An important book

This is a small book. Less than 200 pages, and 3/4 size pages at that; I read it this morning before climbing out of bed. Other reviewers have suggested that this is too scholarly, but I didn't find it so. I think it is quite readable by anyone of ordinary education. And I think it does bring up important ideas. As someone else noted, I couldn't help thinking about the current conditions here in the U.S.: few of us trust that this "Wall Street bailout" is the proper course and even those of us who have decided our Presidential picks are fully aware that both parties lie to us as a matter of course. Marek Kohn builds his case that trustful societies are healthy societies and implies that we should be working toward building trust as a way of improving our lot. That idea is hardly new: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" doesn't necessarily have to be interpreted as naive optimism. But it would be new if government policy recognized the importance and value of trust and consciously worked toward increasing it.

Excellent essay written in an easy-to-read style.

"Trust: Self-Interest and the Common Good" is an exploration of the concept of Trust, an admittedly complicated idea that often defies definition and occasionally common sense. Written in a style that explores via concrete examples, author Marek Kohn introduces various aspects of Trust in a series of chapters devoted specifically to them. Not only does he make the subject extremely interesting with his discussions of history, he includes many modern examples and with enough abstraction that larger conclusions may be drawn by the reader. World War I, welfare, diversity, the British Health Service, Facebook, and many other topics are touched upon in a wide-ranging and absorbing discussion that belies its mere 133 pages. Borrowing from philosopher Martin Hollis, one of the most successful sections of "Trust" is what is called a Centipede problem, whereupon a succession of related ideas proceeds to a conclusion through backward induction (basically a conclusion derived from, say, point F to point A). With discussions of trust drawn from authors such as Hobbes, Hume, and Kant representing levels of trust and points along the Centipede, a philosophical basis of the Western concept of trust is built. (In this example the relations between and dependency upon each of the other ideas proves that the shared ideal of the Triumph of Reason is unattainable when self-interest is the only criterion.) I don't always agree with Kohn. For example, he discusses the role of reciprocity in trusting relationships and states "The principle of indirect reciprocity seeds a system that allows people to behave altruistically." Altruism is the absence of self-interest; thus, the statement is a contradiction because it is the future repayment that is entirely within the realm of self-interest whereupon the initial action is taken. The initial cost is the significant mitigating factor. There are other examples, but this isn't a book that lays out a philosophy that readers should necessarily argue; rather, it is one that explores the general ideas of Trust and its role in society. Most importantly, Kohn recognizes that in our modern societies of increasing isolation due to technology and diversity, Trust is worth cultivating and advocating. This is the perfect book for a book club as I'm sure it will inform a great deal of discussion. Highly recommended.

A Discussion and Reflection about an Important Subject

I got this book because I have been noticing how "trust" is integral to our society, even more so since the internet has evolved. The book discusses trust from many viewpoints, including how distrust sometimes evolves in response to computer viruses and attempts to lure children into sexual abuse. The book focuses a lot on how trust and communication co-evolve, and how it links with "self interest" and "the common good". The book goes into what inspires our trust and what makes us feel certain communications are less trustworthy. I enjoyed how to the book focuses on and discusses various themes and gradually weaves them together into an understanding of how trust, communication, mutual interest, and reliableness work in human life. There is an implied ethic which all this is based on. The book itself exemplifies this by not pushing any conclusion on the reader, but more involves the reader in the reflections that the author went through in order to learn what he did.