Trust Me — But Pay Attention, Too!
Guitars & New Shoes Give Clues to Building Better Social Interactions
I’m guitar-sitting. It’s like babysitting, but for a guitar.
Two friends had to move out of their house several months ago, and needed to store some non-essential belongings until they found a new, permanent place to live.
One friend’s sparsely played but well-kept guitar was deemed non-essential; ordinarily, I would argue the opposing view — guitars are essential! — but its non-essentiality meant she needed someone to watch the guitar for her. Me!
I already have a guitar that I play almost daily, so the guest guitar mostly stays in its case, on the other side of the room from the radiators (something to keep in mind during the colder months, when artificially heated air tends to be drier). But I do bring it out every few weeks, tune the strings, and make sure it still sounds and looks OK.
Today was one such day, and my friend’s guitar was next to me, relaxing in the guitar stand, while I awaited a delivery of new shoes that I ordered online.
To my delight, the shoes arrived on my doorstep on the day promised to me when I placed the order the previous week. I’m wearing them now, allowing my old feet to get to know their new, occasional companions.
Cool story, bro, but what does any of this have to do with Christianity and anarchism?
I’m glad you asked!
The generation of trust through attention
One thing that Christian ethics should engender — and that anarchism/voluntarism also values — is a reasonable level of trust, resulting from respectful social interactions. It takes due diligence to get there, but achieving higher levels of trust in a community generally correlates with more happiness.
Trust verified through proper attention also leads to a wealthier society.
Here’s a 1:24 clip from a 2017 theater lecture by Jordan Peterson regarding how eBay should’ve failed, but didn’t (I’ll quote the most pertinent parts below the video):
[EBay] was a kind of miracle. Because what should have happened with eBay was that you sent me junk and I sent you a check that bounced. … But that isn’t what happened.
…
The default trade was so honest ... that all this frozen capital … instantly became money. … So trust is an unbelievably powerful economic force; maybe the most powerful.
This trust had to be scrutinized and proven, or else eBay would’ve had no long-term prospects for survival. And to be more economically feasible, the trust had to be provided by the overwhelming share of participants, rather than imposed by costly “policing” and intrusions into each user’s privacy.
Voluntary behavior was vital to the short-term and long-term success of those involved.
The destruction of trust through government
The What’s Best Next site explains the benefits of a voluntary, demonstrated trust:
[H]igh-trust cultures save a lot of time, because you don’t have to spend so much time controlling, monitoring, checking up, supervising, coming up with hokey motivational programs, creating (and enforcing) pointless rules, and sorting out the communication problems that result from low-trust environments.
Time isn’t the only thing saved. Controlling, monitoring, etc., also waste other resources, like tools, equipment, energy, and people whose efforts could be put to better use.
In other words, more government and quasi-government don’t create a high-trust society. On the contrary, the presence of coercive civil authority in more aspects of our earthly existences is a breeding ground for fraud, waste, resentment, and official violence masquerading as “order.”
Brian Wilson included a litany of government overreach into the lives and livelihoods of U.S. residents in a recent Substack article:
It makes one wonder if slavery had ever really been abolished, as another fellow ’Stacker, Adam Haman, probed in a recent podcast:
And all this is why I began the article with stories about guitar-sitting and buying shoes online.
My friend trusted me with her guitar, but not blindly. She knew I had a guitar myself and took good care of it. Plus, we’ve been friends for many years, so a reasonably verifiable level of trust could form.
My previous pair of shoes lasted through more than two years of rigorous activity (like walking several miles to Church!), so I was glad to find the same brand of shoes available in a similar model. I made earlier purchases from this ecommerce site and found it to be dependable. I had enough attentive, evidence-based trust in the process to pull the trigger on the purchase.
Sure, there’s always a chance that “past performance doesn’t indicate future results” (as the commercials for investment advice typically disclaim). And if such mistakes happen, a built-up, attentive trust can help repair problems.
All told, it’s generally worth it to develop good neighborliness with the folks around you, and to find those larger economic systems that promote efficient, private enterprise, rather than something resembling the DMV.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to release some of the string tension and carefully pack away my friend’s guitar. It looked good and sounded great the past couple of days, as I put it through all sorts of “tests,” often singing along.
If the six-stringed house guest hasn’t returned to my friend in a few weeks, I’ll gladly check on it again; good neighborliness has its perks!
Trust me … with your Comments!
Did you ever babysit, house-sit, pet-sit, guitar-sit for someone? Ever need someone to do such a thing for you?
How are your shoes holding up?
Do you see your society as more high-trust or low-trust? What trends push it in the wrong direction? What actions have you or others used to nudge it in the right direction?
Anything else strike your fancy about today’s themes?
Let me know your thoughts below …
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In daily life I see high trust between people. In terms of systems, governments, technology and the like, I see little trust from the people due to evidenced mistrust (surveillance, punishment, threats, demonising) from them.
Between people I see love, compassion, kindness, aid every single day. I see darkness from the other entities.
I'm not sure e-bay would have functioned on Trust without Paypal, which goes a long way to ensuring trust, by paying when someone sends you junk and credit cards have similar services. Having said that, the number of scammer that I dealt with over the years wasn't terribly high, about the same amount of people who shoplifted I suppose. (I sold thousands upon thousands of guitars on e-bay and bought a hundred or so to, that I fixed up and resold from there as well.)
I'm reminded of a story a friend told me about being in Saudi Arabia during a robbery that turned into murder. The murderer stole from a gold chain shop, the owner was in the back having tea and came out and surprised the robber who stabbed him to death.
The murderer was stabbed to death with the same knife two days later by the shopkeeper's Son in the middle of the town hall after his very short trial. Leaving your gold unattended normally works fine in stores in that country because they could usually Trust the shoppers, the shoppers knew that stealing would get their hand cut off. This thief was from another country and couldn't be trusted because he hadn't had the same upbringing and didn't really know the rules. (Having real enforcement of laws, certainly makes things more efficient., there isn't much need for security in many nations like this. )
Having steady rules that everyone understands will be enforced, because they will get caught and the book will get tossed at them, goes a long way towards building trust.