Low social trust in Rome trapped exchange inside family networks and face‑to‑face stalls, preventing a true market economy. North Sea/Baltic societies’ earlier norms—trusting strangers, nuclear families, late marriage—created the behavioral substrate for impersonal trade once opportunities appeared.
— It highlights culture‑level trust as a market precondition, shifting development policy from institutions alone to social capital formation.
Tove K
2025.08.25
68% relevant
The article argues that large-scale human societies required overcoming innate male reproductive competition to enable cooperation among unrelated males. This echoes the existing idea’s claim that cultural norms enabling trust beyond kin were the precondition for impersonal exchange and complex markets.
Isegoria
2025.08.14
100% relevant
“People trusted only their close friends and relatives… an economy of markets never evolved into a true market economy,” plus the Hajnal‑line traits list.
David Josef Volodzko
2025.07.30
67% relevant
Both argue that durable institutions emerge from underlying cultural norms: the article claims U.S. cultural programs (JCII, Oppenheimer’s tour) helped seed democratic values in Japan, paralleling the existing idea’s thesis that impersonal markets require pre‑existing trust norms.
Helen Dale
2025.03.23
78% relevant
The piece argues that societies are 'built on connections first, then on transactions' and that migration outcomes depend on how well incoming cultures fit receiving institutions, echoing the claim that impersonal trust and social norms are prerequisites for market exchange and growth.