Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by starbeast 2740 days ago
>People who don't trust each other don't engage in trade.

You are going to need one hell of a citation for that claim, or you are using some new definition of 'trust' that I have not previously encountered.

1 comments

Saying "citation needed" doesn't work when it's one of the fundamentals of the field. But hey, Hackernews, I'll google it for you:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41638856?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

http://econ.sciences-po.fr/sites/default/files/file/yann%20a...

https://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f7e3/e958b4b7387707a5ae32fa...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2906280

http://www.oecd.org/innovation/research/1825662.pdf

https://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/IMG/pdf/Huck2.pdf

I stopped midway down the first page. But this quote is great, so I'll include it:

"Conjoint action is possible just in proportion as human beings can rely on each other. There are countries in Europe, of first-rate industrial capabilities, where the most serious impediment to conducting business concerns on a large scale, is the rarity of persons who are supposed fit to be trusted with the receipt and expenditure of large sums of money."

- John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848

Caveat Emptor - Chandelor v Lopus (1603)

edit - there is a core difference in definitions of trust going on here and it is basically the difference between the list of people you would lend money to vs the list of people you would buy something from. For certain trades, these lists are essentially the same, but for other trades they are very, very different.