Tag Archives: trust

Trust, City Life–and a Meditation on Branding

One blog I follow is CityScope–an ongoing conversation about urban life and innovation around the globe. A recent post there focused on one of my preoccupations, the importance of trust in building social capital and facilitating city life, from a fresh perspective.

Obviously, trust has always been a social dynamic in cities. (So has mistrust. See Ferguson, Missouri.)  Today, some combination of technology, austerity and social transformation seems to be changing the conversation. The rise of mobile apps, social media and other web-enabled forms of communication are a big part of what’s going on. These platforms don’t create trust, but they do create new ways for us to discover trust and put it to work in cities.

The author of the post quoted Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, who described how his service, which lets people rent out their homes or spare bedrooms to strangers, had expanded to more than 34,000 cities in 190 countries in a mere six years.

“At its core, the thing that we invented wasn’t the ability to book someone’s home,” Chesky said. “What we invented was a very streamlined mechanism for trust.”

“Before us, essentially everyone was a stranger,” Chesky continued. “The only thing you could buy was from companies — those companies had brands, and those brands said the companies could be trusted. A person — you couldn’t trust. The moment identity got attached to people, suddenly the playing field was level. People could act as businesses. They could act as microentrepreneurs.”

I hadn’t really thought about the role of branding in creating trust, and reading this gave me one of those “aha” moments. Of course! That’s why people stop at a Wendy’s or McDonalds when they’re on a road trip–they “trust” what they’ll get; they’ll know what to expect. That’s why my husband orders his khakis from LL Bean when he buys on the internet; he knows what he will get in both quality and fit.  Creating and then fulfilling expectations is what “branding” is mostly about. (I do recognize that a large part of the preference for upscale appliances and identifiable designer clothing among those who can afford such things is not reliance on the inherent quality of the goods, but the message sent by flaunting the brand.)

Keeping one’s brand trustworthy is incredibly important to commercial enterprises. Public relations professionals sometimes specialize in “crisis management”–handling events that might reduce brand trust and thus loyalty. (NFL, anyone?) Companies that cannot manage these PR disasters find themselves in deep trouble.

Politically, we are about to see what happens when a political party’s brand becomes toxic to the nation as a whole, but the dynamics of the organization prevent cooler heads from “managing” the problem.

Recently, a Republican high in the party hierarchy admitted to a friend of mine that there is no way today’s GOP can win the Presidency; absent residential sorting, gerrymandering and voter “ID” laws, the party would not be able to win House seats. It may take another couple of election cycles, but the “brand” is increasingly toxic to younger voters, who “trust” it to take positions that are anathema to most of them.

When the old white guys who can be relied upon to support the brand no matter how repellent it has become die off, the Grand Old Party will face a choice: abandon its current radicalism and return to the center-right brand that sold well, or become irrelevant.
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Distrust, American Style

A few years back, I wrote a book titled Distrust, American Style: Diversity and the Crisis of Public Confidence. (Still available on Amazon–hint, hint…). The book was a response–a rebuttal, actually–to arguments advanced by Robert Putnam (better known for Bowling Alone),  who had theorized that rising levels of distrust were a response to Americans’ growing diversity.

My own research suggested otherwise. Certainly, living in urban areas populated with lots of folks who look and act differently from you can generate some anxiety, but my reading suggested a different culprit: insecurity, exacerbated by crime and the lack of a social safety net.

A telling comparison can be drawn between the U.S. and Canada, countries with very similar cultural roots and environments. Canadians watch American television, read many of the same newspapers and magazines, and even have relatively high gun ownership rates–but far less crime and social distrust. What Canada does have that U.S. Americans do not is a strong social safety net, and most importantly, universal health care.

A recent study provides further evidence of the connection between economic security and social trust.

Greater income inequality, the team found, was correlated with lower trust in others, while greater poverty, more violent crime, and an improving stock market were linked with less confidence in institutions.

We might expect that people who live in constant fear that they are one illness away from bankruptcy, who live in neighborhoods where jobs are scarce and crime is rampant, would become wary and distrustful.

Ironically, however, income inequality is equally likely to create distrust and fear in wealthier precincts. Gated communities, booming sales of security cameras, the rise in “private” police, all testify to the insecurity of the well-to-do.

Poor people fear disaster; rich people fear poor people. And no one trusts anyone.

But hey–our taxes are lower than ever.

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News You Can Use?

I was pretty exasperated by my undergraduate class this semester: their lack of interest in government, politics and policy was matched only by their inability to write a grammatical sentence. (This is most definitely not typical. Generally, SPEA students are pretty engaged with policy—they are, after all, enrolled in a school of public affairs.)

Although there were exceptions, this semester, my undergraduates were intellectually inert–unaware of current events, unfamiliar with news media (online or off), and generally passive about most of the issues of the day. (The exception, interestingly, was same-sex marriage, for which most of them expressed strong support.)

As the semester went on, I became increasingly frustrated, and as a result I did something I’d never previously done: I added an entirely optional “extra credit” question to the take-home examination.

 During the semester, I have noticed—and expressed concern about—the lack of interest in current events, politics and policy displayed by a significant percentage of this class. Answering only for yourself, what would it take to make you take an interest in public affairs? What would make you a regular reader of media accounts of current events and policy debates? What would it take to engage you in political discussions and activities? (If you are engaged—why?)

Most of the students chose to answer the question (they needed the extra points!), and I was struck by the consistency of their responses. They claimed that they don’t follow the news because they don’t trust the news media.

Over and over, students characterized the current media environment as polarizing and unreliable. They were skeptical of the accuracy of reporting, going so far as to suggest that politically partisan sources don’t simply engage in spin, but actually “make stuff up.”

And they painted with a broad brush—they didn’t distinguish between the more obviously partisan reporting from Fox News and MSNBC and more trustworthy sources like the New York Times or (locally) the IBJ.

One student wrote, “Perhaps, if I knew of a credible source that I could rely on to just report facts, I’d be willing to spend the time to know more.”

Although I would argue that disengagement is the worst possible response to this phenomenon–if, indeed, distrust was what was motivating their indifference– these students aren’t entirely wrong.

Those of us who have followed the efforts of traditional newspapers to survive in an electronic era have bemoaned the loss of much local news coverage, the layoffs of investigative reporters and the replacement of hard news with “soft” human interest and “how-to” features. Fewer and fewer news sources are offering what we used to call “the news of verification.” The explosion of all-news cable channels and the twenty-four-hour “news hole” have encouraged a rush to be first, and damn the accuracy.

A great irony of our current media environment is that while we are awash in information, the credibility of that information has steadily diminished. Students look at the news media—traditional press, bloggers, television news, the constant messages via twitter and Facebook—and they see an undifferentiated mass of propaganda, “infotainment” and sensationalism.

A common advertising come-on for newspapers these days is “news you can use.”

Apparently, what we really need is “news you can trust.”

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A Question of Trust

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has introduced a bill that would require the Supreme Court to develop a code of ethics. (Surprising at it may seem, the high court does not have such a code, although all other courts do.)

The bill was prompted by several recent controversies over judicial recusal, especially a number of cases in which Scalia–who has grown more voluble and intemperate over the years– has spoken publicly on the merits of cases that were highly likely to come before the Court (historically, and under existing codes of ethics, a judicial no-no) and then refused to recuse himself when the cases were argued.

There has also been considerable criticism of Justice Thomas, who has failed to recuse himself in cases where his wife has a clear interest in the result. Justice Kagan has been criticized for sitting on cases in which she was involved to some extent as Solicitor General.

As a scholar of constitutional courts noted on a listserv the other day, “the US is still rare in the world in making recusal of a judge a matter for the personal decision of that judge, without any way to contest it.  In the German Federal Constitutional Court, for example, the decision to remove a judge from a particular case is made by the rest of the judges in that Senate with the judge in question not participating.    We should have some comparable process here.”

Codes of ethics are about more than recusal, of course. They are centered on avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, in recognition that the legitimacy of public institutions and especially the Courts is dependent upon public trust.

Ethics codes typically limit the value of gifts that may be accepted, or forbid their acceptance at all. That includes junkets, generously paid speaking engagements, and other activities or favors that might produce bias. And most codes of ethics require a measure of disclosure significantly greater than is current Court practice.

In a government based on separation of powers, the legislature may lack the authority to tell the Court to clean up its act–and the Court gets the final word on that issue. In a Court as ideologically divided as this one, I suppose decisions about recusal could themselves become politicized. The GOP’s Tea Party wing will probably oppose Murphy’s bill, since most of the shenanigans these days are by conservative jurists. So passage of this measure is hardly a slam-dunk.

That said, it really is indefensible that the Supreme Court exempts itself from ethical principles that apply to other judicial and administrative entities. Even Congress has a Code of Ethics, however honored in the breach it may be.

When Justice Scalia goes duck hunting with a litigant (Dick Cheney) whose case is then pending before the Court; when Thomas sits on a case despite the fact that his wife’s organization is an interested party, I think skepticism about their ability to render a dispassionate verdict is understandable–and foreseeable.

Such behavior erodes the public trust, and it greatly diminishes the stature of the Court.

There is a reason Courts should be–and be seen to be–incorruptable. They are, after all, in the business of disappointing litigants; every time someone wins, someone else loses. If credible charges of favoritism or bias can be leveled, even if untrue, citizens ultimately lose respect for the rule of law.

Judges–especially Supreme Court Justices– used to take great pains to avoid the slightest appearance of impropriety; they used to aspire to be “as pure as the driven snow.” Lately (as Mae West memorably put it), they’ve drifted.

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The Challenges of Complexity

Last night, I attended a dinner in Lafayette. A delightful man at my table turned out to be a retired environmental engineer, and during the conversation, the subject of fracking came up.

I’ve had a good deal of trepidation about the practice, so I was surprised when he said that–done with a reasonable level of care–it doesn’t pose a threat to environmental safety. He also noted that the abundance, and relatively low cost, of natural gas could both lessen our dependence on foreign oil and give the economy a needed boost.

On the way home, I thought about our conversation, and realized that I had absolutely no way to evaluate the accuracy of his observations, or to weigh them against the arguments of those who oppose fracking. I don’t know enough.

The problem is, in so many areas of our communal life, we are all in the position of not knowing enough to make sound, evidence-based decisions. In an increasingly complex world, a world in which none of us can possibly have the knowledge needed to make independent decisions, we have no alternative but to place our trust in experts.

I’ve written a lot about the “trust deficit” in America, and its various causes. This dinner-table conversation focused me on one of the most troubling results of that deficit.

How do we make sound policy decisions when so many of the issues we face require considerable expertise, but we don’t know who has that expertise, who is able to render an unbiased and informed opinion, and who is “in the pocket” of an interest group or otherwise untrustworthy?

What was the old Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”

We are.

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