The tempo of trust

A healthy economy distributes wealth slowly. Healthy societies cannot survive when it becomes easy for a fortunate few to get rich quick. 

The issue of allocation is who gets it; the issue of apportionment is how long does it take and how long does it last. 

The rhythm, the temporal dimension, enters into the economic structure not through the allocation question but through the apportionment question. 

The temporal dimension registers in the economy as risk and as finance. The economy's ability to discriminate gambling from investment depends on how the political structure apportions property rights to risk finance. The socialists and fascists condemned property rights for all investment transactions; the capitalists extolled property rights for all investment transactions. Both were misguided. The question is how fast and how long do property rights obtain, not who has claims to them. 

The problem with the free market system America devised is that contracts can be executed instantaneously, and they can last forever: across generations with the elimination of the death taxes; and in perpetuity through the instruments of corporations and foundations and trusts. 

When we speak of slow money we should be thinking about transactions that take years to consummate, and property rights that expire within decades and not centuries or millennia. 

We could manage the problem of property rights by addressing the rules for transactions. The speed and longevity of transactions should be adjusted to the tempo of the building up and the expiring down of trust. Trust takes time and repeated interactions to build up; and trust wanes with disuse. 

What we need to figure out is how trust and desert are related to each other. Trust thrusts the transaction into the domain of social relationship. Trust is built up through gift exchange and not through market transaction. Trust is the proxy for social relationship in a market transaction world. 

The use of money facilitates quickie and perpetual contractual transaction. If we couldn't use money we would have to trust each other to do business. 

Consider an economy that prohibited women from using money. It could be the female is the one who ought to decide on the apportionment matters in an economy. Women have a built in concern for the long-term. 

We should think of market intercourse the way we think about sexual intercourse. Some one of the two parties needs to worry about the dangers of casual transaction. By convention that responsibility has traditionally been given to the woman's honor.