Sunday 3 November 2002

Pic of the day: Building trust can never begin too early. (Screenshot from The Sims.

A society of trust?

Wow. I never knew that Norway was a high-trust country. But now that I read it in this article in The Economist, it makes sense.

Researchers have found that the use of Internet in a country is more than anything else related to the general feeling of trust, as measured by the percentage of people who believe that most people can be trusted. Until now, it was believed that the spread of the Internet was decided mainly by how many people could afford computers and connection.

My native Norway is specifically mentioned (which is rare in The Economist) as a high-trust country. And I have to agree that we probably are. We have reason to. We don't have terrorist groups here, running around and blowing up people and property. Even the suppressed minority in our northern reaches, the Sami, are decent and peaceful people. At worst, they may sing mocking songs about us in a language we don't understand.

We don't trust immigrants, at least not Muslims from the Middle East. We did at first, but not anymore. They kill and rape way too much to be trusted. It almost seems like some countries are simply dumping their criminals on us. This makes sense, since we are the world's certified most gullible nation. On the bright side, we have the Internet and they have the Middle Ages still.

(I did not really mean to imply that each and every Muslim from the Middle East does his part of murder and rapine. Just that when such crimes are reported, it is disproportionally common that one of these guys is behind it, even though they are a small minority among us.)

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Also I don't think it is a coincidence that the most trustful nations also tend to be among the richest. I firmly believe that the arrow of cause and effect points that way: A society built on trust is likely to be richer. Of course there are reasons for this trust. We don't have competing tribes fighting for independence or supremacy. We don't have neighbors trying to invade us regularly. We don't have a history of military coups, and we don't have a big divide between a few rich and a multitude of starving poor.

But it is also a self-sustaining process. As the rule of law makes us richer, we have more to lose, therefore we support the rule of law more. People who have little to lose are more likely to support violent revolution or other disruptive behavior.

The Nordic countries have been democracies for a long time, as has the USA. In fact, the USA became a democracy (or rather a republic) before Norway, which could explain why they are also ranking highly even though they have less money for each person and larger class divides. I think democracy is the first foundation for trust. If people don't feel that they own their government, they cannot really have safety for life or property either.

Newly developing countries should take heed. If they want the benefits we enjoy, they will also have to build a level of trust like ours. A one-party state is not likely to do that.