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I wonder if you're unfairly conflating the term "social capital" with the general caustic meanness of economic "capitalism". Putnam is a political scientist, not an economist. I honestly think that most of the relentless unpleasantness of capitalism doesn't come from capital itself, it comes from competition and conflict over scarce resources. It's this conflict between different pools of capital which makes capitalism relentless and exhausting, and the fact that such conflicts are often won by the side which starts with more for unrelated reasons which makes capitalism unfair and often of very questionable morality. I think it's relevant to the article to point out that I this model, all of these conflicts are essentially low trust environments since the actors have by definition opposing goals. But "social capital" doesn't have to be about conflict. Let's say I am fortunate enough to have a friendly relationship with my next door neighbors. To give a cliched example, let's say I want to bake a cake and am running low on sugar. Being able to ask them allows me to finish my task without stopping everything to run to the store. Likewise, if they need to leave town for an emergency, they can call me to check on their place or walk their dog. These examples don't involve any conflict, so it's not clear who's losing out on any of them*? The social capital of our friendship definitely made us more productive, but who wouldn't want that? This isn't about pleasing some kind of corporate manager and churning out more widgets, it's just about personal quality of life, so what's left for there to be a problem with the idea of social capital? * I suppose if we're being extreme then we could say that the sugar providers and grocery store lost in the first exchange by my ability to avoid buying another bag. I'm not sure this is entirely true, though, since I'm very likely to buy more sugar on my next trip anyhow. They've lost out on the urgency perhaps, but as a side note I believe that urgency is the core of the other worst aspects and cruelty of commercial capitalism; urgency sometimes forces incredibly wasteful behavior in the name of "winning the race" against a competitor or many other kinds of artificial deadlines, etc. (Anyhow I digress...) |