High Trust As Force Multiplier

One of the most challenges passages in the Bible is the Parable of the Talents. In it, initial resources are distributed to the servants in a highly unequal manner, with a 10x ratio between the highest and lowest recipient. And then that which was held by the least endowed servant was redistributed upward to the person with the most resources. It concludes with the famous line, “For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.”

Let’s be honest, doesn’t this seem to be how the world actually works? It does seem that there’s a natural concentration toward the top, which is only reversed with great effort (or great calamity like war).

We see this on display in a recent study in Medellin, Colombia. Chris Blattman, one of the researchers, tweeted an interesting thread with findings and a link to the full study. In Colombia, policing is a national function, so cities that want to do something about crime and disorder have to employ civilians to try this. (Former Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus famously sent out an army of mimes to try to encourage better driving).

This study involved randomly assigning civilian liaisons to various Medellin neighborhoods, creating a task force to address needs identified by the liaisons, and putting on a public services fair. The net result of this was “No change in crime. No fall in emergency calls. No increase in perceived services. No gain in legitimacy.” This was after a “60-fold intensification of street-level staff + a 3-fold increase in central attention.”

But this headline finding obscured something going on under the covers. Some of the neighborhoods started off with better services, better policing, etc. They had more of what’s often called “state capacity.” This was not just associated with income. There were low income areas with good state capacity as well as higher income areas.

In the neighborhoods with better initial state capacity, there actually were very good results from this program. Blattman notes, “In initially well-governed sectors, state legitimacy rose about 10%, reported crime fell by 28%, and emergency calls to police dropped 55%.”

We see here again this parable of the talents effect in action. For areas that have, interventions produce more. For areas that have not, interventions have no effect.

I consider state capacity, which we might consider more broadly as the institutional ability to competently get stuff done, as part of social trust. Do we, can we, should we trust the government, other institutions, or other citizens? There are multiple dimensions of this: trustworthiness (ethical dealings), competence, delivery of results (a product of trustworthiness and competence applied to a defined mission).

If you have this trust, it operates as a force multiplier that makes everything else work better. When it’s lost, it undermines everything else you try to do.

I previously wrote about a series of major transformational investments in Carmel, Indiana. While nothing is without controversy in politics, suburban jurisdictions like this are often able to get citizen buy in to very large spending programs, even in red states like Indiana. Trust is a major factor in that. This not only enables them to gain public buy in to spending, but facilitates those investments making major community improvements. By contrast, urban governments these days resemble the gang that can’t shoot straight. They spend lots of money, but it’s often being squandered. (This is not entirely a matter of trust. Suburbanites also are more willing to back public investment because they believe it will benefit them personally rather than being redistributed to lower income people, but higher trust is also a factor).

America is in the process of being transformed from a high trust country into a much lower trust one. This isn’t just my opinion. We see it in the surveys showing declining trust in institutions, for example. This is a bearish indicator for our country.

In this environment, those of us who run institutions or government entities need to actively manage for trust (including competence). Once lost, high trust seems to be incredibly difficult to rebuild. And without it, the going will get very difficult for anyone seeking to make positive change.

At the same time, we also need to be thinking about building compensating structures to mitigate the effect of a declining trust environment on our families and institutions.