With the expansion of the market, people's transactions need more and more honesty. However, what is honesty? Why do people have a strong demand for honesty? Understanding this problem is of great practical significance for establishing the credit mechanism of the market and society and developing and safeguarding the interests of the vast majority of people.
First, honesty is the source of benefits. Honesty, reputation and credit are different, but their connotations are basically the same. In ancient society, honesty was emphasized, while in modern society, it was emphasized. Credit can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. Credit in a broad sense refers to the value orientation based on honesty and trustworthiness among the subjects of Du Hui, that is, what people usually call "keeping promises", "keeping credibility" and "keeping promises as good as a thousand dollars". In a narrow sense, credit refers to the ability of the trustee to honor a certain promise (contract) to the lender within a specified time under the modern market conditions. According to the subdivision of credit, due to the different nature of trustees, credit can be divided into public credit, commercial credit, organizational credit and government credit; From the social point of view, credit can be divided into two categories, one is organizational credit, including government, enterprises and other social organizations, and the other is personal credit, which is the basic cell of organizational credit. Therefore, credit is first and foremost an individual's behavior and an ability to perform contracts. Honesty is a radical phrase, and "faith" is the central word, which modifies and restricts "faith". Therefore, the core of honesty is trust. "Honest people, heaven also, honest people, people's way (Yuziyu)." Honesty means truth. Mencius regards honesty as the law of nature, and people's preference for honesty is also in line with human nature. However, faith and honesty have different meanings. Believers are also the soul of the Tao. Without faith in human nature, it leaves the way of life and violates the laws of nature. Therefore, China Confucian culture attaches great importance to honesty. Confucius said that "benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith" are the essence of Confucian culture. Belief in these five words is the foundation of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom, and the starting point and destination of being a man. Confucius was puzzled by people who didn't keep their promises. He said, "People who don't keep their promises don't know what they can do." . So he came to the conclusion that "people can't stand without faith" and warned people that being rich and expensive is "what people want", but "if you don't get what you want, there will be no place to stand". The ancients regarded honesty as the foundation of the country, which is very consistent with human nature and natural laws. Honesty is not only the bond of transaction, but also the source of profit. China people realized in ancient times that honesty can bring them benefits. This is more than 2000 years earlier than the hypothesis of economic man with self-interested behavior put forward by Adam Smith in Britain. Mozi said: "If you seek things with others, the ancestors will get them;" Doing things with others, the ancestors will do it. " "People benefit from those who benefit others." Another old saying is "If you want to take it, you must take it first". These old sayings imply the causal relationship when people trade. It means that if you ask others for something, let them get it first; When you cooperate with others, you should help others succeed first. As long as your behavior is beneficial to others, you will also benefit from it. It is not difficult to see that ancient transactions also used interests, which can correctly handle the dialectical relationship between "those who benefit others" and "those who benefit others". Maintaining the trading relationship mainly depends on honesty, which is not only the source of profits, but also the way to make profits. In modern times, honesty also fully conforms to the hypothesis of economic man. Adam Smith of Britain believes that the starting point for anyone to make economic decisions is basically self-interest. His view of economic man mainly includes the following points: ① Everyone is a judge of his own interests, and his behavior can enable him to achieve his own goal (maximization of interests) without interference; (2) Everyone has to consider the selfish interests of others when pursuing their own interests, otherwise it will be difficult to realize their own interests, which constitutes the significance of the transaction; (3) When everyone is free to choose a way to pursue their own best interests, "an invisible hand" will guide their pursuit of their own interests to a way that can make the greatest contribution to the public interest. From Smith's point of view, it can be seen that the pursuit of economic man's own interests is basically rational and based on honesty. Especially in transactions, economic men not only pursue their own private interests, but also consider the private interests of others. Only by realizing the self-interest of others can his own self-interest be realized. This is exactly the same as what Mozi said in ancient China: "Those who benefit others get their benefits. "The broker knows the importance of honesty in the transaction. If he doesn't keep his word, the transaction can't be carried out. Without the transaction, he can't realize his personal interests. Therefore, rational economic man is very trustworthy in the transaction. It is this that establishes that honesty is the premise of trading, and trading is the source of realizing personal interests. To realize personal interests, we must be honest and trustworthy; Only by adhering to integrity can we continuously expand our transactions, and only by continuously expanding our transactions can we continuously increase our personal interests. Therefore, throughout the world, honesty is not only a moral issue, but also an economic interest issue, and interest is the essence of honesty, and honesty is the source of interest. Without honesty, interest will become passive water.
Second, honesty is the result of repeated games. Honesty is not people's voluntary choice, but the need of their own interests and the result of repeated games in transactions. It is found that in a relatively closed small village, people have relatively high reliability and ability to perform their duties. Why? Because everyone lives together, who is trustworthy and who is not trustworthy, the identification and transmission of information is faster. If someone has a bad reputation, everyone will know it soon, so it is difficult for this person to gain the trust of other people in this village. He may break the deal with other people in the village because of his bad faith and be punished as he should. This is very bad for a dishonest person, which not only loses many trading opportunities, but also damages personal reputation and the whole family and even future generations. Before he died, an old farmer called his son and told him that he had not paid back the money he owed his neighbor, because his father's debt was still a sign of good faith. If the son doesn't pay his father's debts, his family will be treacherous. Therefore, in a relatively closed society, due to the limitation of trading scope, people need to trade repeatedly in this narrow range, and often choose to keep their promises for their own interests. However, in a relatively open city, there are many untrustworthy people. Why? Because the city is different from the countryside, the city has a large population, great mobility, frequent transactions, and it is difficult to identify and transmit information, especially one-time transactions, and the possibility of dishonesty is the greatest. If the benefits of breaking faith in a transaction are greater than the cost of keeping faith, and it is a one-time transaction, then people are likely to choose to break faith. If the transaction is repeated, then he may choose to keep his word, because keeping his word can bring him long-term benefits. Therefore, in an open society, if there is no information disclosure and display mechanism, people may choose to break their promises when the benefits of breaking their promises outweigh the costs of keeping their promises. In order to prove that the above judgment stems from the mechanism driven by personal interests, this paper simply analyzes how honesty is established by citing game theory. Suppose two people (A and B) make a deal and reach an agreement after bargaining. During the performance of the contract, the profit obtained by Party B from the new investment opportunity was greater than the profit of the project, so it was impossible for Party B to carry out the project with Party A. In this regard, Party A adopted a tit-for-tat strategy and resorted to the law. As a result, the two sides did not cooperate, resulting in both losses. Later, when they were in contact with others, they learned the lesson of non-cooperation and chose the strategy of cooperation. Both sides benefit, leading to a "win-win" result. From these two games, they know that choosing non-cooperative strategy will lead to the loss of interests; Choosing cooperation strategy is beneficial to both sides, so the benefits of keeping promises are greater than those of breaking promises. The above game process is simply that you choose not to cooperate, and I also choose not to cooperate. If you don't cooperate, I will suffer. Only if you don't cooperate and I don't cooperate will the two sides reach a non-cooperative balance. You choose to cooperate, I choose to cooperate. Only when both sides choose to cooperate can we achieve balanced cooperation. Through repeated games, people will eventually choose honesty. Therefore, honesty is the result of repeated games. Since honesty is selfish, what is the basis for people to choose honesty? Generally speaking, honesty has strong predictive characteristics, mainly from information. Because in the state of information asymmetry, the party with information advantage is often easy to cheat the other party in one-time sale. For example, due to the serious information asymmetry between producers and consumers, the production and sale of fake and shoddy products hurt consumers. Producers know that they are producing fakes, while consumers buy fakes from producers because they lack the necessary information and don't know that they are fakes. As a result, producers get huge benefits from producing fake goods, while consumers' interests are harmed. If someone discloses the information that producers produce fake goods, consumers will not be deceived. However, society cannot provide people with complete information, and people can only make choices according to their own expectations. Producers expect that the fakes they produce will not be seen through, so they make a decision to produce fakes; Consumers expect that the products they buy will not be fake, so they make a purchase decision. So the two sides finally clinched a deal according to their own expectations. Here, the quantity and authenticity of information play a decisive role in the expectations of both parties to the transaction. Facts have proved that producers with information advantages are often not honest with consumers who lack information. Because producers don't stress honesty, they can bring the greatest benefits to themselves. Therefore, information asymmetry is the deep reason for not stressing honesty. To tell the truth, it is necessary to disclose information and establish a social information identification and transmission mechanism. Only by disclosing complete and true information can people weigh the pros and cons in the transaction and finally make a trustworthy choice.
Third, honesty has external economic characteristics. The problems that society has faced and is facing are all external problems. Externality exists in the process of social and economic development. In western economic theory, there are many definitions of externalities (or external effects). What is externality? Simply put, when a person (or some people) does not fully bear the costs and benefits caused by his own actions, on the other hand, when someone bears the costs and benefits caused by others' actions, there is externality. First of all, externalities involve human behavior. Of course, here, these actions refer to the interaction between people, that is, transactions. In communication, there are conflicts of interest between people. Secondly, it involves the criteria of externalities. This standard is the standard for judging efficiency in economic theory based on contract theory. This theory holds that the transaction agreed by both parties is the most efficient transaction, and whether they agree or not is not a psychological problem, but a cost problem. Thirdly, it involves the concepts of cost and benefit. As soon as these two concepts encounter externalities, the boundary between them becomes blurred. In interpersonal communication, one person's cost may be another person's income; One person's income may be another person's cost. Externality is closely related to honesty. Externality comes from transaction, but transaction comes from honesty. Honesty will produce positive external effects, also known as external economy; Without honesty, there will be negative external effects, which is the so-called external diseconomy. Specifically, honesty is the key to trading. When both sides are trustworthy, it will not only benefit both sides, but also generate external economy for the third party. Because both sides of the transaction are trustworthy, this will not only help both sides to continue the transaction, but also expand the transaction with others because of their good reputation. On the contrary, if both sides of the transaction do not stress honesty, it will not only harm their own interests, but also harm the interests of others. For example, China's "triangle debt" is a very convincing example. It seems that Party A's failure to repay the debts owed to Party B is a matter for both parties, but it is not. Party B's failure to repay the debts owed by Party A affects Party B's ability to directly repay the debts of Party C, which leads to Party B's dishonesty and damages the interests of Party C ... This is external diseconomy. Therefore, the breach of trust by one party to a transaction will have a chain reaction, which is a common phenomenon in today's society. Dishonesty may be related to some institutional defects and high transaction costs. Many studies show that market transactions and government actions are based on certain systems and rules. If a system is flawed, or there is no constraint on prior transactions, or a right is not clearly defined, or the cost of implementing the system is too high, or there is no effective supervision, it may lead to breach of contract and dishonesty. From this perspective, honesty is related to institutional arrangements. Ronald coase (1960) proved in his article "Social Cost" that in the case of zero transaction cost, no matter how the initial resources and rights are allocated, the final resources will be used most valuable, and rational subjects will always take spillover costs and benefits into account, so social costs will no longer exist. In fact, in the real world, the transaction cost is not zero but positive. When the transaction cost is positive, different definitions will lead to different effective allocation of resources, and the transaction cost makes the allocation of ownership the primary factor. Therefore, Coase put forward the definition of property rights and the importance of property rights division in economic transactions. Even after the initial definition of property rights is clear, the two parties involved in the negotiations will use the market mechanism to find institutional arrangements to minimize the loss of their respective interests by concluding contracts. Coase not only reveals that externalities can be internalized through contractual arrangements between the two parties to the transaction, but also puts forward that externalities can be included in the cost function of both parties to the transaction through the definition of government property rights, property rights arrangements and institutional innovation. Although externalities can be internalized through contracts or institutional arrangements, the implementation of contracts and institutions depends on the honesty and trustworthiness of both parties. If the contract is incomplete and the system is defective, either party may "exploit the loophole" in order to obtain the maximum benefit, thus resulting in negative externalities. Therefore, to solve the externality problem, we should not only solve the problem of contract and institutional arrangement, but also solve the problem of integrity. To solve the problem of dishonesty, it is important to increase the cost of dishonesty. Only when the cost of breaking promises exceeds the ability to pay, the faithless will honestly choose to keep their promises. In order to bring the externalities of good faith into the cost function of all parties to the transaction, the government should increase the supply of good faith system, especially the behavior of market participants' access, operation and withdrawal, increase the institutional arrangement of good faith, gradually reduce the externalities, breach of contract and dishonesty brought by the transaction, and ensure that people pursue and realize the maximization of personal interests under the premise of keeping faith.