Trust

Francis Fukuyama's Trust, an excellent synthesis of economics, political science and sociology, makes a brilliant case about how the level of trust in a society - social capital - influences the scale of economic organizations. Familistic societies like China and India tend to have small family businesses while high trust societies such as Germany and Japan are likely to develop huge corporations. The lack of trust for non-kin serves as a limit to the expansion of business as the family runs out of competent members to act as managers.

The Philippines falls more closely at the familistic end of the spectrum. We do not have large, global brands like Samsung and Sony and our biggest companies are controlled by families such as the Sys, Tans, and Ayalas. While we have a noisy media, a vocal church, and vibrant NGOs, it is hard to characterize our society as having high spontaneous sociability - the capacity to associate with others. It is no surprise then that in the political arena, there are no cohesive political parties that articulate and aggregate interests. Rather, personalities and money still dominate.

It seems that for the Philippines to achieve economic and political modernity, Filipinos will have to get better at the art of association. Dirty public spaces and dangerous driving habits both attest to our disregard for others' welfare. Yet we were all taught as schoolchildren about the traditional idea of bayanihan. I can only hope that the virtual social networks of the 21st century will allow us to rediscover and recreate that lost social capital.