Money At The Expense Of Trust
Trust is only becoming more expensive because the worst thing people do is betray themselves, and others, for nothing.
You are human.
You meet another human. The first thing you wonder is if I can trust this person. You pull back each other’s layers to reveal what hides inside. Do they avoid eye contact? What does their body language say? How do they make me feel? Some people you meet have an aura of trust. You trust them within minutes–others take time. The interaction is rigid before it becomes humanized. Someone cracks the joke, gives the first compliment, or shows a sliver of vulnerability. Exhales are exchanged. You might flirt, and be playful. You begin to trust each other.
Time passes, and the trust grows stronger. You lock eyes for minutes, not afraid to see each other. You are expressive in your body language. The jokes become untamed, you both are more accepting. The compliments grow from “I like your shoes” to “I appreciate you for the laughs and conversation you bring into my life.” They shift from tangible to intangible. You joke on each other, all in good faith. The layer of trust expanded, but it took time, and you are happy you got there.
It is a slow build and scarce – something to value if afforded. Trust is expensive. It takes years to build but seconds to lose.
We hear so many things making it hard to know what to trust. No longer is it all signal–most has become noise. The newspaper delivered on your front step twice a day via the paperboy morphed into social media. The constraints of the print size of a newspaper became how fast we can type, an exponential improvement for dissemination. We have become accustomed to hearing things that have little meaning because we hear so much. We have heard it, seen it, watched it, or know it is useless. Something is said, but it carries no weight.
It has only made trust more expensive. Everyone holds theirs closely. The economy is built on individuals trying to leverage their trust with their reach. If they can gain your trust while capturing your attention with their reach, they captured the two most expensive commodities: trust and attention.
Javier Milei did just that in the Argentine presidential election. Milei was unconventional. He had no public office experience until he was elected deputy in 2021. He is eccentric – prone to public outbursts of rage on TV. A bit crazy, but he leveraged his craziness because we are all crazy in our own ways. He convinced the populace they could trust him. He won the presidential election in a landslide, winning 56% of the vote in South America’s second largest economy. The Argentine people trusted him to reverse a lagging economy.
It was going well until it wasn’t.
A website called “Viva La Libertad” was launched to boost the Argentine economy by funding small projects and local business. The details of how this would work was still unclear. In conjunction with the project, a crypto coin called Libra was launched. The coin was launched on a platform that requires zero personal authentication and is known for scams.
Half an hour post launch, Javier Milei tweeted directing his four million followers on how to purchase the coin. The market cap of Libra skyrocketed going from zero to $4.5 billion in a mere 45 minutes, making it the 9th most valuable company in Argentina by market cap. As is typical with crypto, the early investors sold with the money flooding in. Within an hour, Libra lost 70% of its value. President Milei deleted his tweet claiming he wasn’t informed of the finer details of the project, but the damage was done. 75% of Libra investors lost money. On one end, people lost $10,000 even $100,000, but someone’s loss is another person’s gain. Over a few hours, one of the token’s developers made $9 million.
A president leveraged his following and inflicted financial damage. He expressed regret, but apologies only take you so far. Trust evaporated in an instant. He was experiencing success as the president too, bringing inflation down, wages up, and expanding the Argentine economy. However, now lies a stain. It’s hard to recapture trust and forget him inflicting avoidable financial damage on the people of his country. Now, he must not only continue to rebuild the economy, but people’s trust.
When your president encourages you to participate in a cryptocurrency that is rug pulled – you stop trusting anything. Everything is being sold to you. Societies that were once high trust shift to low trust. Places that were once a sanctuary are now ruined.
Today, everything has a price. College sports now allow athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeliness, read brand. The players deserve it. In 2013, before all of this, Shabazz Napier led the Connecticut Huskies to a national championship, but “some nights I go to bed starving” because he didn’t have enough money. It makes sense until it becomes extreme.
Players are on their fifth team in five years and it begins to make sense that we have trust issues. It is hard to believe the loyalty of any player now. The love for players who stay all four years and became program legends is gone, only disconnecting fans further.
Take AJ Storr, a basketball player for St. John’s who made the All-Conference freshman team. You think okay, he will probably return to St. John’s, he is progressing towards the NBA, and the coaching is working. However, he transfers to Wisconsin following his freshman season. At Wisconsin, he plays well and makes All-Conference second team. Wisconsin fans are ecstatic. However, it isn’t enough. He is on his third team in three years after transferring from Wisconsin to Kansas. Now, he can’t even crack the rotation at Kansas and has statistical lows in every category.
I get it. Some of these kids are lured with life-changing money. It is hard to resist, but think about the message it sends. For fans, coaches even, sports are an outlet. If your team can’t keep a player experiencing success because they always need more money, when they already are paid hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, it is hard to know what to trust. Loyalty in sports these days? Yeah, right.
The trust begins to fray. Not only do players leave our teams, but everyone claims they have sources that know the truth. This player is transferring, that coach is taking a head coaching job, blah blah blah. It has become this way with anything. Music, movies, celebrity relationships, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, it is all of it. This person cheated, these two are dating, but we reach the point of exhaustion. What is true? We are in a coma of information struggling to discern what to trust.
Trust has never been more expensive, and people continue to disregard it. Less thinking about whether this will push me away or bring me closer to someone and more of a Mr. Krab’s mindset. Money, money, money.
From afar, we admire the talent of these presidents, leaders, athletes, and those we respect, but what matters is character. Can we trust this person? Can we trust this project? Trust is expensive because the worst thing people do is betray themselves, and others, for nothing.
What did Javier Milei gain by promoting a cryptocurrency? Why do players abandon fan bases and coaches that help them succeed? Trust becomes more important as the rate of change accelerates and the dissemination of information quickens. You might impress people with your skills, but the most successful achieve through trust and standing on something bigger than themselves.
-Scantron
Always appreciate you for reading.
i am baffled when celebrities promote junk food, betting apps, and cryptocurrency. but what do we know, eh? maybe money > morals and ethics?