The Rational Humanitarians 87
An absence of skepticism toward regulation and control is also revealed by the Swede’s acceptance of ”Personal Identification Numbers.” Each person living in Sweden is given such a number, which consists of one’s birth date plus four other digits. It appears on all kinds of records: tax, bank, hospital, university, national health insurance office, dentist’s, police, and social agency records. It appears on your order slip to a mail order house, on check blanks, magazine subscriptions, driver’s license, optician’s order form, on your application for a charge card or an adult education course- among innumerable other places. It is as omnipresent as your fingerprint. When the standardized personal identification number was proposed in other European countries, it met with indignant opposition. The Swedes, however, quietly
accepted this system two decades ago. Asked about her reaction to this system, an otherwise circumspect Swede immediately replied, ”It’s all right with me. I have nothing to hide! And if merging computer files by means of personal ID numbers can uncover people who are reporting lower income than they have to get higher welfare benefits, it’s the price we have to pay!”
The response would appear to be typical, according to a survey conducted by the Institute. On
overwhelming majority (71 percent) interviewed believe it is not improper for the government to merge computer files about its citizens, in order to check the truthfulness of the information given by applicants for social subsidies.
The same trust. or absence of inherent distrust, in the authorities and their creations- the rules and
regulations — was evident in interviews conducted by the Institute in 1979 and 1980, at the time of the referendum on nuclear energy. In the public mind, responsibility for the safety of power plants and the
constructive use of nuclear energy was placed in the hands of ”them”— meaning alternatively experts,
politicians, scientists, or members of the riksdag. The same attitude was expressed on another occasion regarding the regulation of a computerized society. In neither case were those interviewed of the opinion that the authorities themselves might require monitoring.
In sum: minds that function like precision instruments in other contexts lose their sharpness when it comes to subjecting
their regulatory system to questioning. Indeed, there does not seem to be any keenly felt need to do so. We have the opposite of a credibility
gap — a credibility bond between the people and the rules designed to regulate them.
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