There is an old stereotype of Asian markets that goes like this: Asians don’t really have capitalism, they have relational capitalism. Relationships are what matter first in Asia. And then the standard critique follows: and that is why their markets are inefficient, because they care too much about relationships.
In this light, I found the following observation by a Japanese lawyer over dinner the other night about what is wrong with US markets deliciously challenging to the standard dogma: Why, he asked me, when Americans meet in the market, do they insist on pretending they are friends? “When I hire a taxi to take me from point A to point B,” he said, “it is because I want a ride, not a conversation. Why do I have to engage in the farce that what I am really after is a chat about the weather with the driver? Or when I go to get my haircut, it is because I actually want a haircut. Or if I want to buy a sandwich, it is because I am hungry, not because I want to make friends with the waitress. I talk all day long for a living, and yet I find that in America in addition to paying a fee you get charged another kind of charge–you have to do the work of making small talk too.”
He has a point–we Americans seem to need to dress up our capitalism as if it were relational capitalism. In Japan, at least, in contrast, when you pay for a service, you don’t have to pretend the seller of the service is your new best friend.