Keeping Company with Seabright

According to Paul Seabright, “the unplanned but sophisticated coordination of modern economies is a remarkable fact that needs an explanation.” In this paper, I explore what is remarkable about modern economies and investigate what Seabright identifies as the aspect “that needs an explanation.” Essentially, Seabright is interested in the fact that modern economies require a great deal in the way of trustworthy behavior (and trust) in order to function well—and these trust relations must operate specifically among “strangers”! The puzzle for him is how relations of trust (and trustworthiness) among strangers could conceivably have arisen from our tribal evolutionary past. I raise several queries about his diagnosis of this puzzle and of his answer to it.