Consider this: why do people say they don't trust bankers or politicians, yet they trust strangers to share a ride with them? We are at the start of the third, biggest trust revolution in the history of humankind. When we look at the past, we can see that trust falls into distinct chapters. The first was local, when we lived within the boundaries of small local communities where everyone knew everyone else. The second was institutional, a kind of intermediated trust that ran through a variety of contracts, courts and corporate brands, freeing commerce from local exchanges and creating the foundation necessary for an organised industrial society. And the third, still very much in its infancy, is distributed.
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