Certainly, this is a question worth asking. Especially so, since much of the economic life we take for granted is built on levels of trust among strangers. What comes first: trust, or the economic relationships which make it possible? While these are relative concepts, it's still possible that some gains have been lost, particularly in areas which have experienced decline. Without high levels of trust, maintaining a productive economy - let alone well functioning society - would not be easy. In particular, reestablishing trust among individuals in lower income settings is one of the more important challenges of the present.
Some have suggested that digital entertainment and other consumption could take the place of meaningful work and engagement, where no room (supposedly) exists for economic access. However social skills tend to become lost, when consumption becomes the only remaining option for anyone. In most circumstance, it is difficult to meaningfully play, when meaningful work is not part of the same scenario.
Anyone not truly engaged on economic terms, is likely to have issues with negotiation skills, reason and logic, and social/economic reciprocity. In social terms the phrase comes to mind, "water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink". We want to trust, just as we want others to be able to trust us. Yet in many instances, those without economic access have few means to either offer one's friendship or accept the invitation of others.
Many institutions have been forced to factor out or limit economic participation (in aggregate), just to pay the bills. Rather than debate whether or why this has happened, it would better to make time use an arbitrage point, so that the high hanging fruit of knowledge use can be brought back into the picture. This time around, knowledge use and more effective skills capacity need to be components of everyone's participation, so that gene pools do not continue needlessly splitting off from one another indefinitely. This is not just a matter of tending to a missing marketplace, which is important enough in itself. It's about extending an invitation to lots of individuals to meaningfully rejoin the human race.
Where trust exists among individuals, fewer rules are needed and more discretion is possible. However, discretion is not always easy when rules have already substituted (far and wide it seems) for the ability to directly negotiate with others. By using time as a compensated point of arbitrage, decentralized settings for services formations could generate multidimensional activity. In other words, educational factors can be brought back into the same environments as work and related living arrangements. By generating social interaction in multidimensional settings, it becomes easier not only to discern character formation, but to more effectively develop character as well.
Why should this matter? Consider what are often limited interactions with others, in settings which are not connected with one another in any way: for instance grocery stores, walking trails, even church settings to some extent. Unless one has mutual friends in these settings, the lack of local activities held in common with others, can make it difficult to establish the level of trust necessary to form relationships. In the twentieth century, many were able to overcome reluctance to engage with others who seemed "different" in any way, because of workplaces held in common. As these kinds of workplace formations have decreased in some areas, "differences" are once again perceived as something negative.
While it would take time to do so, societal trust can be regained. However, services product needs to be reexamined and locally restructured, before greater trust become possible to achieve. All too often, groups now want to split off from one another. But splitting off as a reactionary process is not necessarily conducive to positive change. Effective decentralization needs interior sustainability. How can new connecting points be created at basic economic levels? How can economic service product be redefined in ways that honor human dignity? These factors need consideration, before societal trust can be rebuilt.
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