It does take time and energy to make people with whom you have a relationship feel trust. At basis, you need to give them enough information so that they can decide for themselves that trust is warranted.

It follows that provisions of the U.S. Constitution that allow the legislature to learn about (literally “oversee”) the acts of the executive, actually engender trust. It’s a shame that the current Administration views this powerful tool for making a cohesive society with such disdain. But then, fostering a cohesive society is not their aim.

The trust intangible may be scarce, but it can also be abundant, and it can be infinite too. It is not scarce like natural resources, and behaves in entirely different ways. The idea is that in this epoch traditional economics of scarcity are replaced with a new logic and economics of abundance.

There’s ‘…only so much to go around…’ is the classic principle of scarcity economics. For our Internet epoch the focus on scarcity of finite tangibles is orthogonal.

For example, today there is a certain popular nonsense concerning ‘attention economics’ or ‘attention management’ (command and control) as if the attention intangible is a scarce, finite resource that needs to be control and optimized like an ore mine. To see this how utterly ridiculous this is, all one needs to do is visit eBay’s headquarters reception in SJ. There you will see displays of thousands of Pez dispensers. The collection was made possible by eBay and was among the reason the company was founded – to fundamentally release enormous, unlimited amounts of digital attention. It’s abundant, non-scarce – believe it, like trust and other intangibles, there is far more than enough attention ‘…to go around…’

Heidi and Alvin Toffler are advancing the notion of a focus on non-scarce intangibles doubling national GDP in a generation (~25-years). Many, like me, agree strongly. It’s what makes value networks, value networks analysis and its absolute focus on abundant co-creation of value and intangibles so essential, so critical to individuals, business, organizations, civil societies, the environment and the future.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity

-j

I wish this were true, but even though there is a deficiency of trust, people are still not sufficiently sensitized to it. It’s a phenomenon analogous to putting a frog in boiling water. If you warm the water slowly the frog will never notice the danger and save itself by jump out. The erosion of trust we have become sensitized to recently is the result of a long-term trend highlighted from time to time (more so recently) with scandalous front-page stories. However, we accept it as the status quo, shaking our heads in disbelief, all-the-while resigned to accepting this reality as a law of (human) nature.

People may well be starved for trust, but they still don’t feel the hunger pains. As a result, the market for trust is still limited largely to early adopters. Organizations do not have a budget for trust. They do however invest huge sums managing risks, which only serves to perpetuate mistrust.

- Alex Todd
Trust Enabling Strategies
http://TrustEnablement.com

This post made me think of the enormous markets for trust’s close cousin, faith.

By far the largest, most coherent voting constituency today in the US political landscape is evangelical Christians. They are numbering about 30M, and a growing every day. They’ve had their boy in the White House for 6-years.

The evangelicals have a stunning federated support network that spans and masters all media. They are marketing faith. Their capacity and competence for raising money and influencing outcomes is unmatched, even by recent distributed accomplishments of candidates.

Authentic GoP conservatives, conservative Dems, classic liberals, the great center, have all inured the administration. They have long-since been abandoned by this frighteningly effective, faith-based, support network. This evangelical bamboozlement of the USA is akin to mass hypnosis and hijack.

For example, their ridiculous Iraq mantra, ‘Stay the Course,’ is equivalent to ‘Have Faith.’ (?) The faith markets are flourishing.

Sadly, the extreme far-left is learning from these great evangelical masters and using applied support networks to hold well-meaning Dems hostage.

The marketing of faith in support networks is nothing new. What is new are the media that make codification, coherence and diffusion so blindingly fast. The fringe has mastered these networks. There is a network vacuum in the political center.

Many federated support networks are adolescent. As a consequence, the staggering power of networks, of support networks, whether it is Al Qaida, the religious right, or the far left, has been discovered and adopted by extremists. The ONLY remedy, the counterattack, is more diverse, fast moving, fluid support networks with moderate and centrist origins. These federated support networks exist today as they always have. They simply have yet to reveal themselves. Recent developments are promising.

-j

All OK with the login. Here is my comment.

I look forward to learning more and offer for your consideration as a topic my latest paper “Achieving Sustainable Development: The Integrative Improvement Institutes Project” which was presented at the Inaugural All China Economics International Conference in Hong Kong on 19 December 2006. A copy is available online at:-
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/businessenvironment/rc/ItemDetail.do?itemId=1091332

The Project seeks through education and training in, and implementation of Integrative Improvement to advance the support economy in a sustainable way.

In brief, Integrative Improvement is an adaptive, science-based, demand-centred, technology-enabled, practical approach to meeting the governance and other challenges we face in our world, our organisations and our economies. It is applicable to individuals and all business, government and civil society organisations and is culturally neutral.