It is a matterof trust

John D. Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Trust buying up shares from shareholders of other oil companies in return for high-yield bonds. He created a monopoly and President Teddy Roosevelt had the Anti-Trust bill passed as law. This is not the kind of trust I will be discussing. Rather, it is the ordinary garden variety one such as with friends and fellow workers that interests me.

What is trust? It is a belief or assumption that the person is a person who keeps his/her word. If she says something you know it is true not necessarily correct factually or scientifically but what that person believes to be true. It is an honest opinion. Trust is that connection we have with other people i.e. a relationship of friendship, marriage or business partnership. It is what binds us to each other to form a larger group or organization.

Look at a wood frame house. What is it that binds the house together? They are nails, hinges, bolts, screws, etc. Notice that the connectors are metallic. They are stronger than the wooden building material. If we use a soft material or even wooden nails the connections wouldn’t be as strong as with metal nails.

So the strength of the connectors that helps the house to last longer. We can therefore safely deduce that trust the binder or connector of human relationship has to be strong. We know that friends are no longer friends when they don’t trust each other; a marriage will not survive if one spouse does not trust the other spouse nor can a business partnership last if one partner doesn’t trust the other.

How do we build trust? We need a Code of Ethics. The business world as the saying goes that it is a dog eat dog world. Should it continue to be like that? Why is it the way it is? It is because business owners are not required to have a Code of Ethics. A person who commits a crime is he/she would be faced with the police. A criminal who starts a business is free to do what he likes as the authorities a blind eye to corporate crime. We saw what happened at Wall Street. There was a financial meltdown as dishonesty prevailed and threatens to destroy the financial system. There is a lack of trust in the financial system. Those certificates of bad mortgages is an act of distrust.