Theft at the Public Till
or even friends or lovers-to have a club to wield to make sure that they are getting what they pay for out of trust. When people are doing the right things for the right reasons we can trust that they will continue to do them. We can let down our guard, relax our vigilance as consumers. When people are doing the right things for the wrong reasons, trust is wholly unjustified. The people must be watched. Mechanisms of supervision and contract enforcement must be developed. And of course the supervisors and enforcers can't be trusted either, and must also he supervised. What a relief it is, after a hard day guarding your back in tlie marketplace against any and all adversaries who are trying to take what is yours, to be able to come home to your haven in a heartless world, kick off your shoes, let down your guard and relax. It's a relief indeed, but for trust to be justified, the intentions associated with genuine love must be present. We live in a society in which people make legal or contractual com- mitments to one another, and our ability to enforce those commitments is good enough that most people honor most contracts most of the time. If our system of legal constraints works, it is only because a critical mass of people has not yet decided to disregard laws and contracts. And people need not totally disregard laws in order to subvert them. They can also subvert laws by honoring them to the letter, but ignoring their spirit, and thus twisting them to serve their own, individual interests. Even if we could enforce all laws and contracts, there would be big trou- ble if we had to depend exclusively on them to get people to act appropriately. You simply can't put everything in a contract. To a large extent, the smooth functioning of the economic and social system depends not on contracts but on a measure of good will. As evidence of the limited value of contracts, consider that one of the most effective devices workers have for exerting control over management involves not going on strike but honoring their contracts to the letter. Such job actions known as working to rule -- paralyze productivity. For as soon as anything unanticipated in the contract comes up (as it inevitably will), workers substitute contractual obligation for judgment and do nothing. We count on workers to enter into agreements with their employers in good faith, to understand the point of their work activity, and
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