Column
2019-2 (2/14/19)
Trust
is indispensable to a prosperous civilization. Try to imagine your
life if you didn’t trust anyone. You would have to test all the
food you bought to make sure it wasn’t spoiled or poisoned. But,
wait, you wouldn’t be able to trust the tester.
What
about trusting the mechanic who fixes the breaks on your car? The
clothing you buy might be saturated with dangerous chemicals. The
bank might never return your money.
Civilization
is built on trust. We generally trust the people who produce and
deliver things we consume or use. If we doubt the trustworthiness of
a supplier we turn to another.
Some
individuals aren’t trustworthy. How can we weed them out? We
should start with the understanding of some basics of human nature.
First we should reject the false idea that some people are selfish
and others are not.
People
often judge selfishness by how much an individual wants material
things. Obtaining material items isn’t anyone’s ultimate goal.
People want things because they believe those things will bring them
satisfaction. Everyone’s ultimate goal is to maximize their
satisfaction. The goods and services we pursue are only means for
achieving our ultimate goal. When a person makes a choice, he choose
the option he believes will yield the most satisfaction. When it
comes to satisfaction, everyone is totally selfish.
When
the manufacturer, merchant, or mechanic serves you he expects to
increase his own satisfaction. He may gain some satisfaction from a
job well done. That satisfaction doesn’t put bread on his table.
He serves you mainly because he hopes to use the money you pay to buy
something he will find satisfying.
Most
of your suppliers in the marketplace are motivated to earn your
trust, even though most of them don’t know you exist. Only the fly
by night con artist can disregard pleasing you.
If
you can’t withhold payment from a supplier, he has far less reason
to please you. If your supplier is accountable to someone other than
you, his self interest demands that he seek to please that person
rather than please you. You trust such suppliers at your peril.
The
idea that you can’t trust business people because they seek profits
doesn’t hold water. Free market businesses must first please their
customers and earn the customer’s trust.
If
a business gains its profits from government subsidies and other
favors, it will be more concerned with pleasing politicians and
government bureaucrats than with pleasing customers.
Most
government enterprises don’t sell their products. Thus, they don’t
have customers to serve. A few, such as municipal water works, sell
their product, but usually have a monopoly in their service area.
Either way, user satisfaction doesn’t have to be high on their list
of concerns. Every employee’s future hangs on the pleasing of the
bureaucrats and politicians above them. The employees future doesn’t
much depend on earning the trust of the users of the product. Thus,
there is reason to be concerned about trusting providers of
government services.
Some
people fantasize that government employees being free of the profit
motive faithfully serve the public. Being free of the profit motive,
only frees government personnel from the need to please the
consumers. Like everyone else government personnel seek first to
please themselves.
They
are much more free to do so than are those who work in the private
sector. Thus, there is far less reason to trust the so called public
servants. The real public servants work for free market enterprises
where their only options are serve or fail.
** * * *
*
* * *
*
* *
*
*
*
Copyright
2019
Albert
D. McCallum
No comments:
Post a Comment