It’s a common idiom and for some people, it may be true. But as the 20th Century poet, Martin Gore, so famously said,
People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully...
And now you're punching and you're kicking and you're shouting at me
I'm relying on your common decency
So far, it hasn't surfaced but I'm sure it exists
It just take[s] a while to travel from your head to your fist
And so, notwithstanding notions like honor, people sometimes live out another common idiom: they break their word.
So, when entering into a deal, how do you protect yourself from the other party deciding later to breach their agreement? Some answers, albeit not perfect, are to:
- Pick your counterparties well. That is, do business with people you trust.
- Build-in mechanisms to your relationship that enable you to confirm your counterparty is doing what they are supposed to, and not doing what they are not supposed to. To quote another poet of the 20th Century, you can trust, "but verify."
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