The End of Trust

Francis Fukuyama envisaged an End of History in which men lost their chests and everybody sort of drifts into that least evil state: liberal democracy. He then wrote a book called Trust which explained why only the West and the Japanese can have a large corporate culture. I am still waiting for the sequels: The End of Trust. Or how about History Reboots? But seeing as how Frank's academic and government postings are helping mellow out his point of view towards the ultra violet end, maybe someone else should take up the story…

Is Liberal Democracy really the last stage of history? This idea of letting people vote for what they wanted slowly developed into the wholly laudable exercise of taxing the haves to pay for public services. It then morphed into buying the votes of the poor with the money of the rich. For a while at least. Now the USA shows the way forward out of this stagnant impasse: instead of taxing the rich you hit them for campaign funds to bamboozle the poor. A lesson from biology: stuff grows or it rots. Should Liberal Democracy be any different?

So how will Trust end? One way is stock option remuneration packages. They transform executives from loyal company servants into ravenous sharks with a three year agenda: to make the results look good at the end of that period for just long enough to cash in and get out – and on to the next. These predators will always be in demand because of the connivance of an equally predatory shareholder base. And Devil take the hindmost.

Another thing Frank has a dig at is Chinese society. The lack of trust outside the blood-related extended family is the reason why they can't have large corporations. The news provides examples of Chinese hankee-pankee:

• eBay.cn has had a taste of sellers copy-pasting legit ads from the US site into the Chinese site to attract innocent bidders for unbelievable (and not to be believed) bargains. Now you need an ID card to become a member of Chinese eBay.

• Beijing street vendors are selling mantou buns with a filling made of cardboard picked off the street and spiced up to taste like meat.

• Efforts by Chinese wine makers to create a French style appellation contrôlée culture are stymied by label forgers

• The biscuit goes to the recently executed head of the corrupt Food and Drugs administration, whose 170,000 product approvals will now have to be re-examined one by one.

These examples show what the Chinese need to learn from the West if they are to create the large corporate culture: they just don't have enough hypocrisy. Oops, I mean they lack a sophisticated business model. What those bun sellers could use is a pharmacy degree. They could go multinational and sell drugs! Those eBay fraudsters need to get Wall Street trading licenses to give their talents full vent. Give those label forgers green cards and let them become contemporary artists. And the Chinese FDA? Take a leaf from the American FDA's book and just don't be so obvious!

http://www.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/fukuyama/Books.html