THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, October 19 - 20, 2019 |C3
Franchises like
this McDonald’s
(which opened
in 1955 in
Des Plaines, Ill.)
drew patrons
partly because
of trust
in the chain’s
self-regulation.The Many
Roads to
Vegetarianism
THE CLAIM THATto-
day’s ingeniously engi-
neered fake meat tastes
like the real thing and
helps the planet is win-
ning over consumers from the carni-
vore side of the food aisle. According
to Barclays, the alt-meat market
could be worth $140 billion a year a
decade from now. But the argument
over the merits of vegetarianism is
nothing new; it’s been going on since
ancient times.
Meat played a pivotal role in the
evolution of the human brain, provid-
ing the necessary calories and pro-
tein to enable it to increase in size.
Nonetheless, meat-eating remained a
luxury in the diets of most early civi-
lizations. It wasn’t much of a per-
sonal sacrifice, therefore, when the
Greek philosopher Pythagoras (ca.
570-495 B.C.), author of the famous
theorem, became what many con-
sider the first vegetarian by choice.
Pythagoreans believed that humans
could be reincarnated as animals and
vice versa, meaning that if you ate
meat, Aunt Lydia could end up on
your plate.
The anti-meat school of thought
was joined a century later by Plato,
who argued in his “Republic” that
meat consumption encouraged deca-
dence and warlike behavior. These
views were strongly countered by Ar-
istotelian philosophy, which taught
that animals exist for human use—an
opinion that the Romans heartily en-
dorsed.
The avoidance of meat for moral
and ascetic reasons also found a
home in Buddhism and Hinduism.
Ashoka the Great, the 3rd-century
Buddhist emperor of the Maurya Dy-
nasty of India, abolished animal sac-
rifice and urged his people to abstain
from eating flesh.It wasn’t until the Enlightenment,
however, that Western moralists and
philosophers began to argue for veg-
etarianism on the grounds that we
have a moral duty to avoid causing
animals pain. In 1641, the Massachu-
setts Bay Colony passed one of the
earliest laws against animal cruelty.
By the early 19th century, the idea
that animals have rights had started
to take hold: The English Romantic
poet Percy Bysshe Shelley prosely-
tized for vegetarianism, as did the
American transcendentalist thinker
Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in
“Walden”: “I have no doubt that it is
part of the destiny of the human
race...to leave off eating animals.”
The word “vegetarian” first ap-
peared in print in England in 1842.
Within a decade, there were vegetar-
ian societies in Britain and America.
Echoing the Platonists rather than
Pythagoras, their guiding motivation
was self-denial as opposed to animal
welfare. Sylvester Graham, the leader
of the early American vegetarian
movement, also urged sexual absti-
nence on his followers.
Vegetarianism finally escaped its
moralistic straitjacket at the end of
the 19th century, when the health
guru John Harvey Kellogg, the inven-
tor of corn flakes, popularized meat-
free living for reasons of bodily well-
being at his Battle Creek Sanitarium
in Michigan.
There continue to be mixed moti-
vations for vegetarianism today.
Burger King’s meatless Impossible
Whopper may be “green,” but it has
less protein and virtually the same
number of calories as the original. A
healthier version will no doubt ap-
pear before long, and some people
hope that when lab-grown meat hits
the market in a few years, it will be
as animal- and climate-friendly as
plant-based food. With a lot of sci-
ence and a bit of luck, vegetarians
and meat-eaters may end up in the
same place.HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
AMANDA FOREMAN
Henry David ThoreauPETER ARKLEA five-star consumer rating system is never
going to replace the FDA. But the New Deal
model of governance—experts based in Wash-
ington writing one-size-fits-all rules—is no lon-
ger enough. New challenges and technologies—
from gene editing to 3-D-printed guns to AI—
are proliferating beyond the capacity of our
mid-20th-century governance tools.
Workplaces might be made safer through
real-time tracking of employee well-being than
by OSHA rules. A souped-up version of the job
and recruiting site Glassdoor might be a better
way of preventing workplace discrimination
than lawsuits brought by the EEOC. And algo-
rithms might be better than judges at setting
criminal punishments because they can take
more data into account and are less likely to
suffer from human biases.
Much more work needs to be done, of course,
before we let these new social technologies han-
dle the bulk of our regulation. But if history is a
guide, new trust technologies will emerge and
displace old ones, offering opportunities to co-
operate in ways we can’t now imagine.
Not everyone will welcome these changes.
Government officials may resist. Those who
benefit from government-granted monopolies
may too, as cabdrivers around the world have
shown in their protests against ride-sharing
companies. The risk of squelching innovation in
the provision of trust is acute because govern-
ment is not just a supplier of trust but a regula-
tor of its competitors in that business. To solve
the challenges of the century ahead and unlock
new possibilities for trusting our fellow human
beings, government will need to let go of the
idea that it is the only reliable provider of trust.Mr. Henderson is a professor of law at the
University of Chicago and the co-author,
with Salen Churi, of “The Trust Revolution:
How the Digitization of Trust Will Revolu-
tionize Business and Government” (Cam-
bridge University Press).lator of stockbrokers. Some deride self-regulation
as foxes guarding the henhouse. The question,
however, isn’t whether it’s perfect but whether
it’s more efficient than the next best alternative.
Consider the rise of fast food in the 1950s. It
is possible that government could have ensured
local hamburger stands along Route 66 were
safe, but the golden arches of McDonald’s were
able to do it at a much lower cost. By letting
McDonald’s provide the trust, government was
able to focus its resources on other things.
The self-regulation at such chains is hardly
infallible, as recent E. coli outbreaks at Chipotle
demonstrate. But there are no perfect regula-
tors. The point is that without national brands,
even in our era of closer public
oversight of health and safety,
all the regulatory work done by
these companies would have to
be done by government instead.
Today, the two work together.
The promise of internet plat-
forms is to harness the informa-
tion of millions of individuals
without relying so much on gov-
ernment or corporations, which
can take advantage of their posi-
tion to serve their own narrow
interests. With digital platforms
tapping into the wisdom of
crowds, we can have the best of
both worlds: a system based on individuals and
voluntary choices that also harnesses more in-
formation than historically available to any one
individual, company or bureaucrat.
No system of trust is foolproof. Digital plat-
forms can use their data in ways that compro-
mise the privacy of customers, and online re-
views can be manipulated. But millions are still
willing to rely on these platforms because they
are better than the alternatives. Robust compe-
tition in the digital sphere is essential to create
new, even more reliable, mechanisms for estab-
lishing trust.T
rust in major institutions
seems to be collapsing in
America in the era of
“fake news,” Russian
bots on Facebook and
tribal politics. A recent Pew Research
Center poll found that about seven in
10 Americans say that trust in soci-
ety—in government, in each other—is
declining. And more than four in 10
Americans think that declining trust is
“a very big problem.”
The stakes are high. Research
shows a strong correlation between
trust and the wealth of a society.
Trust enables cooperation, coopera-
tion enables specialization, and spe-
cialization drives productivity.
Fortunately, indicators of declin-
ing trust miss a deeper reality: While
Americans may increasingly distrust
many of their institutions, technol-
ogy is enabling certain kinds of trust
at levels seldom before seen in hu-
man history.
Consider ride-sharing companies.
If your parents were like mine, they
told you not to ride with strangers.
This is good advice, but there are
places and times—on a trip to a new
city or after a night drinking with
friends—when getting a lift from a
stranger makes sense.
The government offered a creative
solution: taxis. The clearly identifiable
and highly regulated vehicles enable
us to ride safely with drivers we don’t
know. But, like many government so-
lutions, this one was imperfect. The
taxi monopoly restricted supply and
wasn’t known for its innovation or
customer service, and taxis often
avoid certain areas despite legal obli-
gations to serve them.
Ride-sharing companies created a
new way of allowing us to trust a
ride with a stranger: a platform ac-
cessible from a smartphone where
riders can view aggregated driver
ratings. In this way, Uber and Lyft
are providing an alternative less to
taxis than to government.
One key difference between these
companies and government is that
they provide trust through a decentralized plat-
form rather than a centralized bureaucracy. We
don’t trust Uber, per se; we trust the riders who
have gone before us. Ride-sharing apps just make
trusting other people possible and scalable. An-
other difference is that they offer a choice. If you
don’t like Uber, you can try Lyft. There is only
one New York City taxi commission.
While some criticize ride-sharing companies
as unregulated, they provide more regulation
than government in some ways. Parents can
track children riding in an Uber in real time.
And, if you have a bad experience, you are a
few clicks away from registering your displea-
sure with your driver or getting a refund.
A transformation in the way
that trust is delivered is happen-
ing all around us. We now not
only ride with strangers but
sleep in their homes (Airbnb),
eat at their houses (Feastly) and
borrow from them (Upstart). And
these just scratch the surface of
the new ways we trust. EBay cre-
ated a trust platform that allows
individuals all over the world to
transact in ways unimaginable to
our parents, and blockchain pro-
tocols allow us to securely trans-
act without a bank in sight.
Even if you favor government
oversight and regulation, this is a good thing. If
new suppliers of trust demonstrate that they
are more efficient at delivering the trust neces-
sary to make certain transactions happen, this
frees up government to stick to areas where it
has a comparative advantage.
There is a long history in the U.S. of private
actors stepping in to establish public trust. In
18th-century New York, when government re-
fused to enforce brokerage contracts in court, a
group of brokers formed the New York Stock Ex-
change to privately regulate misbehavior. Today,
FROM TOP: ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN TOMAC; GETTY IMAGESFinra, a private corporation, is the primary regu-
BYM.TODDHENDERSONThe U.S.
has a long
history
of private
actors
stepping in
to establish
public trust.ThoughAmericansincreasinglydistrusttheirinstitutions,digital
platformsarespurringthemtorelyononeanotherlikeneverbefore.How Technology
Will Revolutionize
Public Trust
REVIEW