Last week I visited the Trust conference hosted by Sea Salt learning together with my think-tank buddies Marcel and Louis. We were proud too share the insights we gathered and during this event I was confronted with the alternative for Trust. Setup rules and strict controls on them.
This was immediately an eye opener why I like trust so much. Because I hate rules. Sure I understand that it is very useful to have some common practices covered with one another and that it is very handy that we all agree to drive on one side of the road. But the moment people tell me that i must do something, my blood starts to boil. Especially when people are unable to explain to me the why.
Luckily I have data that support me in the pro trust party. Heritage.org shows us that less legislation or approached from a positive view more economic freedom supports our prosperity.
And boosts our innovation
( source: https://www.heritage.org/index/book/chapter-2 )
And we can also find proof that more trust result in a higher GDP
https://ourworldindata.org/trust
With the rise of more Digital solutions entering our society (Data Science & Blockchain for example) we must monitor the risk of rule based interpretation and action. Machine learning can take more variables into account but makes it more difficult to explain why a specific action is taken. It is the responsibility to evaluate the intentions and to forgive and forget sometimes. This is demonstrated in the game shared earlier.
I believe legislation is a shortcoming for society being unable to build and maintain trust. And when it comes to digital legislation the results are not pretty. Looking at the Cookie law and GDPR as an example.
It makes so much sense to focus on building trust, but as long as we believe that somebody who acted on trust and gets cheated on is called naive. Whereas a businessman who misuses trust to close a deal is called clever we still have a lot of work to do.
