There are some essential things in our lives, but we don’t pay attention to them. They are like air: invisible but vital to all of us. These words can be said about trust as well.
We are all born with the aptitude to trust. But our live experience makes us more cautious and rational, and it is reasonable most of the time. However, it is impossible to live without trust. We have to choose trust every single day.
Trust is an all round and complicated term. There are a lot of definitions of this notion nowadays.
I asked some of my friends what trust means to them and got totally different replies. One of them told me that trust is when a person is sure that the other person will do what he promised. The other friend of mine replied that trust means that a person is open for communication and can share his secrets with another person. The third friend thinks that a person can trust only those people who prove their good attitude with their actions. And the forth friend assumes that trust is a kind of confidence that a person will never betray you.
They are right. But now I’d like to put trust in a following context: trust as a kind of a valuable asset, which, if used in a right way, can be beneficial to everyone and can bring profit.
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I speak not of trust people put in you, but about the trust you put in other people.
In this article I’m going to show you how such abstract thing as trust can be a successful investment and bring real income.
Trust is our natural need
But first of all let’s make sure that trust is natural for every living person.
13 years ago Paul Zak a well-known neuroeconomist performed a very interesting experiment. He gathered a group of volunteers and gave 10$ to each of them. The scientist made random pairs and put them in separate rooms. He suggested them sharing the money with other participants. Neither of the participant knew who was his /her partner in the given experiment.
Every experiment participant was explained that the organizers are going to triple any transacted amount. For example, Person A pays Person B 2$ and the last one gets 6$. Moreover, Person B had a right to act freely. He could return some money or could repay with ingratitude. Only he could make a decision whether he pays some money back or returns not a single penny.
The result exceeded all the expectations – 80% of “A”s shared money with “B”s and 95% of the last ones paid some money back to “A”s. They gave different amounts but always shared.
If all of them didn’t trust each other and didn’t think to get trust in return, no one would transfer the money. Person A wouldn’t do that because he had no reason to think that an unacquainted partner would pay the part of the amount back. Person B didn’t have to return money, because he had no profit from the transaction.
The first person is led by the trust to a stranger (it is supposed that he would pay as good as he got) and the second one is led by the desire to prove the trust (to pay back).
The given experiment was performed many times not even in the USA but in some other countries. The participants were given different amounts to avoid the risk of the influence of the amount at the decision made. But the results were always the same.
So now we can make a conclusion that trust is a natural need but not a forced necessity.
You give trust – you get trust
Now let’s see how trust influences people’s relations and behavior.
One New York street salesman Jim set up his coffee and doughnuts stand next to the tall office building. Hungry customers formed endless lines around Jim’s stand during coffee time. But many of them were annoyed by the length of the line and the left. Jim realized that the reason is the time he spends on each customer, he spent too much time to give change to every buyer.
So the salesman took a risk and entrusted the process of counting change to the buyers themselves. He put a box with coins near his stand. People could take the change from the box.
You could think that it is a rash decision…
But in fact it turned out to be that no one took extra money. And Jim noticed that customers began to leave more tips to reward his trust to them. This idea released some spare time for Jim, as a result, his income doubled. Many casual customers became loyal, because they liked that they are trusted.
The thing is that Jim increased his income not by means of special investment but just trusting.
The example shows that we can expect more loyalty from people than we think. And such an invisible and abstract thing as trust can bring us real profit.
Here is an example from big bisness.
Pierre Omidyar based his eBay company upon an idea that most of the people are worth trust.
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And he was right. When he was asked, what was the main thing he learned after the establishment of the company, he replied: “I’ve learned this wonderful fact that 135 millions of people realized that they can trust the people they don’t know at all. It brought incredible social effect. People have much more in common than they think.
Technology is essential but trust is more important
Our world is constantly changing. New technologies, business models and social devices are developing rapidly. But various social relations and partnership are the basis of any society and economics. And any relations or partnership thrive or fade because of the trust.
Today we speak a lot about the idea that blockchain is able to reduce the need of trust. Really, if all the transactions made are registered in independent accounting system, people don’t need to have trust-based relations. If every bargainer relies on the technology, he doesn’t have to trust people.
But what is behind the technologies? To say it right, who is?
Every technology, even if it is autonomous, is run by people. And every technology can be changed (the provement is Ethereum hard fork). And it doesn’t depend on us. Our trust depends only on us, this is what only we can do. Trust is our main asset in this world. And only trust will “give us food” no matter who we are and what we do.
Tom Pieters defined it like: “Technique and technology are essential, but the main question of a decade is how can we gain much trust”.
When we assess any project or a start up, we consider many points: Project Whitepaper, the degree of its innovation, market potential, possible profit level and etc. But first of all we evaluate people who develop that project. At least I do this.
It’s the level of trust we put in those people, who promise to lead the project to success, defines our further interest and decision whether to take part in the project or not. And it’s our trust proved by our money allows all the participants, you and those whom you trust, to get profit.
Well, trust is a kind of mutually beneficial partnership.
Trust to Steemit is our common asset
Success of any matter is the result of trust. The more customers trust the manufacturer, the more goods they buy and the more profit bring. The more people trust any cryptocurrency the higher its rate and its cost – ploughback. The more people trust a project the higher is its value and potential.
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So the more trust we put in Steemit, the more valuable it becomes.
Let’s remember this.
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Thank you for attention.
I would be grateful for your opinion.