There's this deep seated inverse relationship between cultural diversity and trust that is going to be a challenge when we undeniably face increasing globalization, and personal mobility.
Cash on delivery is quite common in India; and it's small businesses that often work this way - you can call your local grocer, electrical store or pharmacy and they will bring the goods home and collect cash. If Pizza delivery can work this way, so can the other things in life one would think. That said, it's hard in India if you don't speak the local language, or don't know the shop owner personally or if you don't have an address in an upscale part of town or otherwise have established a circle of trust with your retailer. Interestingly trust levels are higher in poorer neighborhoods than richer neighborhoods because of the lack of personal mobility, the shared spaces and the pressures of life on everyone to open up. Switzerland (where I live now) has such little cultural diversity, and the government does such a good job of generally keeping the bad guys out that most spheres of life have a sort of blind trust. You can get on a train and almost always no one will check your ticket; or you can order something on the Internet and it will be shipped to you along with a bill, and you have thirty days to pay it at a bank or post office. There's also something to be said for learned behavior - if no one else around you is committing a crime it's harder to be the first - morality like most things human is relative. I was reading a story in the Atlantic or some such about mixed race neighborhoods becoming the norm in the US. That is, an Italian part of town where everyone on the street came from Italy a couple of generations ago is no longer true. While this sounds like a big win for cultural aggregation, the studies are finding that people will no longer trust their neighbor who maybe from India or Australia or wherever in the world to babysit their kids when they go out shopping, or little things like that which neighbors do. Of course there's been more research into this - the thing is there's no clear solution in sight - especially when social networking allows you to carry your personal circle of friends and trusted people around wherever you are in the world. Unsurprisingly ist is no where near satisfying as the real thing - contact in the physical world. This is also true in India - where this aggregation happened 30-50 years ago - as the cities grow multi-cultural trust breaks down. Humans are not wired very well for diversity vis-a-vis trust. Some scholarly research: When Does Diversity Erode Trust? Neighborhood Diversity, Interpersonal Trust and the Mediating Effect of Social Interactions http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/philosophische_fakultaet/is/makro/lehre/ws0809/rn0809/pssozkap/stolle%20et%20al%202008.pdf A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth? http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=full Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital by Robert D. Putnam http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/assoc/bowling.html Also, a book: http://books.google.com/books/about/Bowling_alone.html?hl=de&id=rd2ibodep7UC&redir_esc=n
