Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity (book)

This book analyzes the relationship between trust structures and economic structures in society.  It finds that businesses are organized around trust structures.  So a society where trust exists only in the extended family will have companies that are family based.  High trust societies where strangers can trust each other will have dynamic business structures because the people can organize themselves into businesses in many ways based on mutual trust.  So the corporate form developed in America when it was high-trust and the keiretsu developed in Japan.  Today, Japan is still a high trust society.  Germany is given as another example with only slightly lower trust.  And America is given as an example that was high-trust but trust is fading fast.  Also mentioned are societies where there isn't even trust in the extended family.  These societies are simply economic basket cases since they can't organize anything.  This book referred to the book The Moral Basis of a Backward Society as an example.  It didn't say so explicitly, but it was indicated that America is headed in this direction.  The issue of family breakdown in America was mentioned but there was no mention of the harmful affects of feminism.

This book is well worth reading as the only book I know of that focuses on the importance of trust in society.