THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST

"One of the most important lessons we can learn from an examination of economic life is that a nation’s well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society.

People who distrust one another will end up cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations, which have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated, and enforced, sometimes by coercive means.

This legal apparatus, serving as a substitute for trust, entails what economists call ‘transaction costs.’ Widespread distrust in a society, in other words, imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay."

–       Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

Trust is at the same time a fundamental necessity and by-product of a free society. A free society requires trust to function, and there are incentives to act in trustworthy ways in a free society. Without trust our way of life would be impossible.

The breakdown of trust is the most troublesome effect of the continual growth and intrusion of our government into our businesses, our beliefs, and our personal lives.

As a classical liberal, I don’t hold much trust in government in principle. I know that there are different motivations and rewards when a person works in government than when he works in the rest of the world. I also take seriously Jefferson’s admonition that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

But that has mostly been an abstract idea. Sure, there are corrupt politicians and rotten people in government. And there is an acceptance of a certain degree of waste and abuse of power – it’s just inevitable with government. But there is a basic human trust that has been a part of America’s moral fabric, that includes all people – even those in government – that we are losing.

Trust makes civilization possible, it makes material and cultural improvement possible, and a culture of trust allows us to become more fully human. The more trusting the society, the more prosperous it will become.

Trust allows us to depend on each other. It allows us to relax and expect that what another person says he will do is what he will actually do. When we trust somebody, we can focus on whatever is most important to us, rather than worrying about how we might be tricked, deceived, disappointed, or attacked.

Feeling trust is deeply connected with our sense of well being. It even predicts such things as lower risk of suicide and auto accidents.

But in relationship to government at all levels I find myself feeling less and less trust, and this colors the atmosphere of daily life in a way that I am not at all happy about. I don’t know, maybe it’s the IRS actively thwarting conservative’s political activities, or the NSA spying on all of us in violation of the fourth amendment, or being told that a terrorist attack on our embassy in Benghazi was just a bunch of whacky natives, riled up by a You Tube video.

These things all add up, but they are just the more dramatic ingredients to a process of erosion of trust that’s been proceeding for at least the past 5 years.

I have plenty of criticism of this president. His speeches on race have actively divided the country more on those lines than I can remember. As I wrote about in Race way back in 2005, if, as a group, we focus on what we have in common other than race, the issue of race disappears as an issue in 4 minutes.

Obama has been doing just the opposite. When he talks about economics, it is almost always divisive, us-versus-them ("At some point you’ve made enough money;" "spread the wealth around;" "you didn’t earn that.").

There are many more examples, but to put the focus purely on Obama is to miss a larger dynamic, the one that got him elected in the first place.

I don’t remember in the past making huge distinctions between shopkeepers, teachers, doctors, firemen, or builders. If people were good people, and took pride in their work, that earned them a degree of trust. But things have changed, and we are creating a nation of two classes: the government class, and the rest of us.

In California I have friends who are teachers, firemen, lifeguards, planning department officials, water resources managers; all government workers in California. All retired at 55 with a higher pension than most of us reliably make in our businesses. In California, government work is the growth industry.

I have nothing against these people, in fact some of them have been friends for decades and I love them dearly. Some are conservative, some are liberal, but there is a place in me where I can go if I choose (we always have the choice) where I can feel resentful and angry with them.

Why is that? Because we have a win/lose arrangement. Their prosperity is directly drawn from my productive work. I didn’t need what most of them offered when they were working, and I get nothing from them now that they are living on their pensions, but they get everything they have first, directly off the top of my profits, through income, property, and sales taxes.

Successful business arrangements are win/win. I trade my value in the form of money for something that is if equal or greater value in your product or service; for you, the money I trade is of equal or greater value than the product or service you provide. We both get more of what we want or need.

Government arrangements could be win/win. I pay a certain amount to my government, through taxes or some other arrangement, and they provide a service that I could not otherwise reliably enjoy. Courts, police, military, maybe roads or other shared infrastructure… these are all services that could be provided by government in a win/win arrangement.

But paying people to retire at 55 on huge guaranteed pensions? Providing them with salaries that are in the neighborhood of twice as high as comparable jobs in the private sector? With better benefits? This is not win/win. It fuels resentment and erodes trust.

This process has been going on since time began; it’s in the nature of government. But it has accelerated.

We may have an opportunity to reverse this process – paradoxically because of the blatant avalanche of what seem like new daily revelations of absurd abuses of power at the federal level.

If we can use these scandals as leverage to eliminate whole portions of parasitical bureaucracies, or entire agencies, and through our re-awakened vigilance clean out the Augean stables that have been growing putrid without opposition; if our press can begin to do its job of shining a light on those who would enslave us and abuse their power, then we could probably re-establish the kind of trust that most Americans have been used to taking for granted.

But it will take bold action now on the part of some of our elected officials, and some of our more courageous journalists, and it will take the rest of us prodding them and supporting them to do so.

It will also take talking about it, which is why I’m writing this article. It will take us talking with our friends and neighbors, going to town hall and city council meetings, and letting people know that we see what they are doing, and that the kind of assumptions about government power, government benevolence, and government entitlement that have been allowed to hold sway are no longer valid.

For government, and the media, to earn some degree of our trust again will take more than an apology, or some change in window dressing. It will mean they have to change their behavior significantly.

Think of what you would need to see in a person who had betrayed your trust for you to trust them again. It would have to be a big, clear, and consistent change in behavior. Words won’t do it, they’re as cheap as our national currency is becoming. There has to be a change in the structure and the assumptions of our government for us to regain some trust in them again.

That’s the reality. There’s no fudging this one, there’s no squirrelly words that anybody can use to make the consequences change. The people in our government have to change their behavior dramatically in order to regain a degree of our trust.

The good news is that it’s also the opportunity we have to regain our freedom; because ultimately, what will rebuild our trust is a return to liberty as the core guiding principle of America.

~

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