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Taken on Trust

There is much talk these days of the nature of “high trust” societies and the many benefits which they bring, or once brought in the case of countries like Great Britain that, until relatively recently, fell into this category.

The young Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015) was astounded when he exited the Underground station at Piccadilly Circus and saw a pile of newspapers and a box of coins and notes, with passers-by being trusted to pay for their own newspaper and calculate their own change. He determined that Singapore must emulate the high trust society that Britons had inherited.

In his excellent book, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory 1793-1815, about the logistics of Britain’s fight against Old Boney, Roger Knight writes of how much trade and agriculture across Great Britain relied upon this trust.

Drovers, for example, would take on thousands of pounds worth of animals — pigs, cattle, etc. — from farmers to drive down to London en masse, not returning for weeks, and usually with little or no paper record.

Citing Bonser’s The Drovers: Who They Were and How They Went, An Epic of the English Countryside, Knight relays the following story:

Perhaps the most impressive demonstration of trust was the tradition of dogs being sent home to Scotland or Wales from London on their own. One story involved a Welsh dog named Carlo who journeyed all the way back to Wales from Kent. His owner sold the pony that he had ridden on the outward journey, intending to go home by coach. He fastened the pony’s harness to the dog’s back and attached a note to it, addressed to each of the inns on the route they had followed, to request food and shelter for the dog, to be repaid on a subsequent journey. Carlo reached home in Wales alone in a week.

Even dogs benefited from a high-trust society.

Published at 11:52 am on Monday 4 March 2024. Categories: Errant Thoughts History Tags: , .
Comments

What a wonderful story.

We were a people of honour and probity once, and worthy of a very much better fate than the one we have ended up with.

— LG Clark 5 Mar 2024 4:54 pm

The first discussion of societal trust I saw is in the book “The Last Centurion”, a modern setting of the Anabasis, by John Ringo. He contrasts “general trust” with “familial trust” rather persuasively, I think. This brought home to me the benefits I had of the vestiges of general trust as a boy in the 1950s in Los Angeles – an environment long gone, alas.

— Louis 5 Mar 2024 7:54 pm

Having grown up in the 1950s in Palo Alto I can only second Louis’s comment. We could roam at will, so long as we were home by dusk. Our parents (rightly) never worried where we might be or what we might be doing. We were safe because we were amongst our own.

And, yes, that is exactly what I mean.

— LG Clark 16 Mar 2024 11:27 pm
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