Here is the quote that is central:
"It is true that cooperation builds trust, and
high levels of trust bring benefits to a
society, lowering transaction costs while
encouraging specialization and trade. But this
only increases the rewards to the
non-cooperating rule-breaker. As the
risk/reward ratio goes higher cheating becomes
more attractive."
There is also another VERY important quote here
that I will not speak a lot about but it's
important to footnote this for another related
TPOV on how memes and values are affected by the
reaction of memes to other memes and the cycle
that is involved, RATHER than a spiral up and
down, but a system of power law distribution. I
will demonstrate this later, but I need video to
help you understand while a spiral is active, a
network is a better descriptor of what is
occurring in the memescape with inflows and
outflows of trust and cooperation--the main topic
of this TPOV.
"The civilized rule
is simple: when you borrow money you must
repay it. But households over-extended
themselves. Lenders overlooked the weakness in
their borrowers' balance sheets. Borrowers
tended to overstate their financial solidity.
Entrepreneurs overreached. Merchants oversold.
Defaults increased. And the real rate of
return declined as trust gave way to fear (of
losing money).
High cooperation = high temptation. At the
margin, where all the important things in life
take place, lax lending standards lead
borrowers to take out loans they can't pay
back. The desire to gain privileges, status,
and income streams overwhelms the respect for
the cooperative protocols that brought the
positive returns in the first place.
New 'values' appear that seem to justify
departure from the original rules.
Self-reliance, forbearance, and independence,
for example, are replaced by fairness,
security, and universal health care. However,
you will notice a clear distinction between
the old values and the new ones.
They reflect a change in attitude, from risk
taking to risk avoidance, from wealth building
to wealth preservation, and from laissez-faire
to centralized control. They may also be
expressed as different kinds of rights. The
former are rights to do something for
yourself. The latter are rights to force
someone else to do something for you. The
former require cooperation.
The latter need only fear and then violence."
While this is a pretty complex--intersubjective--topic,
I felt I could derive some simple ideas that would
be relevant to leaders:
Helpful Hint: Increasing
TRUST, however you do it, leads to increasing
cooperation, and lowers the transaction costs,
increases (iteration) speed and creates both
incremental and disruptive innovation.
I believe this "hint" above marks a much more
important reason for the article than the author's
intent, and while I have no argument with the
intent of the article, the crux of the matter =
TRUST and COOPERATION, and what I would like to
think is a quantum leap forward to "CONTRIBUTION"
BECAUSE of COLLABORATION.
I believe that COLLABORATION is a discontinuous
leap forward for people, rather than what is an
incremental step of cooperation.
I FEEL this is important--so much so--that I need
to point out why.
Going back to Thomas-Kilmann's Conflict Mode
Indicator (TKI), the model:
You will see that in order to get collaboration,
you need a high level of assertiveness and a high
level of cooperativeness. While this is idealistic
in some vein, it's also very important to note
that when we talk about TRUST and COOPERATION, it
is higher, more complete levels of trust that
allow for the competitiveness required between
various views to trigger COLLABORATION and it's at
this level that CONTRIBUTION is usually optimal.
While the author of the piece attached below
didn't intend per se to create the ground, for the
figure of CONTRIBUTION, not alone COLLABORATION,
but to illustrate very effectively what happens
under circumstances of high trust and cooperation
as a matter of not accounting for the diversity of
human nature --> that being opportunism, the law
of human economy (Brian Tracy) --which is get the
most for the least--and the likely
MISUNDERSTANDING of memetic attractors,
hybrids and density:frequency--another topic.
Action Step: In
order to create more density and frequency
(quality and quantity) of CONTRIBUTION, we need to
focus on creating trust and cooperation, which
lays the groundwork for COLLABORATION, however, we
can't forget to maintain scaffolding in those
areas that block the inevitable success of
"opportunism."
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