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We don’t have a trust problem. We have a lack of trustworthy people in positions of power problem. I see how one can be easily confused. But we (the People) don

We don’t have a trust problem. We have a lack of trustworthy people in positions of power problem. I see how one can be easily confused. But we (the People) don’t trust politicians or business leaders because they have show repeatedly they’re not worthy of trust.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
You could argue that one begets the other. I am not going to argue chicken an egg, but US has generally been very anti-government. If you poll Americans about their representatives, the responses are uniformly negative. And yet, we keep re-electing them in massive numbers. It is absolutely fascinating.
- skeptical2 5y ago
- ksdale 5y ago
  I was under the impression that Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Congress as a whole, but the individual representatives are about as popular as you'd expect.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    I can't really speak for the entire nation ( I can't even speak for my neighbors ), but I am sure not approving of my representatives.. I do, however, lack in willingness/drive/money to push for someone else, because that is the part of the equation that makes it genuinely hard to remove an entrenched bureaucrat. And that does not even begin to discuss how easy local party representatives make it to run in IL.
jltsiren 5y ago
That exactly is the trust problem. Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power, if the public assumes that those in power are untrustworthy and corrupt? And why would those in power remain trustworthy when the incentives are clearly in favor of abusing your power and the public assumes that you will do that anyway? It's a vicious cycle, but a virtuous cycle would also work in the same way. Reality shapes people's expectations, and people's expectations shape reality.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > That exactly is the trust problem. Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power, if the public assumes that those in power are untrustworthy and corrupt? To improve society. > And why would those in power remain trustworthy when the incentives are clearly in favor of abusing your power and the public assumes that you will do that anyway? They were never trustworthy to begin with if they do that. Trustworthy does not mean "acts to benefit themselves over others at every opportunity".
  - canadaduane 5y ago
    "never trustworthy to begin with" seems similar to the No True Scotsman[1] fallacy. I've been in religious circles where it's very important to defend the idea that once you believe, you're saved. But there's a darker side to that idea, because in order to maintain belief in the face of someone doubting and leaving the faith, everyone in the faith explains it away with "Oh, they never Really Believed in the first place." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      I can't see any connection to that fallacy. The question was about remaining trustworthy when incentives don't align. Being trustworthy when incentives do align means nothing at all though, does it?
      - canadaduane 5y ago
        People change. Environments can change people--not just incentives. "He was worthy of my trust, and now he's not" is a better framing when encountering new information than "he was never trustworthy to begin with" IMO.
  - JoshuaDavid 5y ago
    > > Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power > To improve society. Is gaining power the most efficient way for a trustworthy and ethically constrained person to improve society? Keep in mind that if you answer that question "yes", you need to believe that attempting to gain power and use it ethically and responsibly is more effective at helping people than trying to earn a bunch of money and throwing it at GiveWell's top charities[1], after adjusting for chance of success, which is a pretty high bar to clear. [1] https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
AceJohnny2 5y ago
> But we (the People) don’t trust politicians or business leaders Part of the problem is bad grouping. I trust some politicians, and some business leaders on some topics. But it's too easy to raise your idols on pedestals where they can do no wrong and you trust them on everything. (Conversely, of vilifying an entire class) I've watched it happen to a significant proportion of the US population. Ironically, in those cases I've personally observed, it actually started from a distrust of the "establishment".
harry8 5y ago
We never trusted politicians. We never trusted corporate executives. We never trusted lawyers. We used to trust that the large news organisations were somewhat self-correcting and accountable. The New York Times, Washington post, Wall st Journal, CNN, NBC, CBS, NPR, etc. After the total lack of accountability for Iraq and WMD, for 2 decades of Afghanistan, The Russiagate debacle and you can add a hundred things you've seen clearly yourself to this list. Trusting these news organisations is pathologically insane. They're clearly very happy to fabricate, to repeat and amplify pure propaganda with no evidence as fact and pretend it never happened or we were all in it together as though readers/watchers being duped are the real problem. This is the trust that changed. Lies "for the greater good" have a huge interest rate when the bill comes due. Nobody was ever inclined to really trust Trump, or Clinton or Bush or Obama or Biden any more than Nixon. Why would you? They're politicians. We trusted the limits on their power and the idea that there was corrective feedback on the system somewhere. We used to think we wouldn't be subject to pravda levels of lies from our "diverse" media sources. Maybe we were terribly naive when we thought that. Now we know there are true stories, well reported in the Times and the Journal for example but you can't assume that about any given story, especially if it affects military funding either directly or indirectly. All the WMD pushing assholes appear to be back pushing the next war and again if you think that going to war is not such a great idea given the last few unmitigated disasters you clearly are carrying water for Bin Laden, I mean Saddam, I mean the Taliban, I mean Assad, I mean PUTIN! Trump (damn him) wanted out of Afghanistan like the majority of Americans. Suddenly there's a totally false story, usually fabricated that he's ignoring PUTIN's bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan to swing public opinion against the steps to get out. Biden (let's go) agrees 100% with Trump and American voters that 20 years and 3 trillion is enough and continues Trump's work and gets out. The tone of reporting changes immediately and his popularity plummets. Nobody "trusted" Biden. Nobody "trusted" Trump. Now many, many more of us from all political persuasions are very suspicious of the negative feedback mechanism to keep them in check because it has been abused so very, very badly. Nothing like providing the raw footage and source documents to de-spin. Anyone doing that is the real focus of censorship.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  > We never trusted politicians. We never trusted corporate executives. We never trusted lawyers. And we should keep it that way! These individuals objectives are not aligned with those of Joe & Jill Everyman.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
If there are so many of you then you should start your own platform. There is no reason facebook/twitter/etc have to host your point of view. There is absolutely zero stopping people from doing this. There are conservative oriented web hosting services, put your stuff there and let the money and followers roll in. If your point of view is popular you will draw people in like flies to honey
- hn_version_0023 5y ago
  I suspect you replied to the wrong person; I’m neither conservative nor interested in people sharing or even really much hearing my point of view.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

You could argue that one begets the other. I am not going to argue chicken an egg, but US has generally been very anti-government. If you poll Americans about their representatives, the responses are uniformly negative. And yet, we keep re-electing them in massive numbers. It is absolutely fascinating.

skeptical2 5y ago
ksdale 5y ago
I was under the impression that Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Congress as a whole, but the individual representatives are about as popular as you'd expect.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I can't really speak for the entire nation ( I can't even speak for my neighbors ), but I am sure not approving of my representatives.. I do, however, lack in willingness/drive/money to push for someone else, because that is the part of the equation that makes it genuinely hard to remove an entrenched bureaucrat. And that does not even begin to discuss how easy local party representatives make it to run in IL.

jltsiren 5y ago

That exactly is the trust problem. Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power, if the public assumes that those in power are untrustworthy and corrupt? And why would those in power remain trustworthy when the incentives are clearly in favor of abusing your power and the public assumes that you will do that anyway? It's a vicious cycle, but a virtuous cycle would also work in the same way. Reality shapes people's expectations, and people's expectations shape reality.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> That exactly is the trust problem. Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power, if the public assumes that those in power are untrustworthy and corrupt? To improve society. > And why would those in power remain trustworthy when the incentives are clearly in favor of abusing your power and the public assumes that you will do that anyway? They were never trustworthy to begin with if they do that. Trustworthy does not mean "acts to benefit themselves over others at every opportunity".
- canadaduane 5y ago
  "never trustworthy to begin with" seems similar to the No True Scotsman[1] fallacy. I've been in religious circles where it's very important to defend the idea that once you believe, you're saved. But there's a darker side to that idea, because in order to maintain belief in the face of someone doubting and leaving the faith, everyone in the faith explains it away with "Oh, they never Really Believed in the first place." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    I can't see any connection to that fallacy. The question was about remaining trustworthy when incentives don't align. Being trustworthy when incentives do align means nothing at all though, does it?
    - canadaduane 5y ago
      People change. Environments can change people--not just incentives. "He was worthy of my trust, and now he's not" is a better framing when encountering new information than "he was never trustworthy to begin with" IMO.
- JoshuaDavid 5y ago
  > > Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power > To improve society. Is gaining power the most efficient way for a trustworthy and ethically constrained person to improve society? Keep in mind that if you answer that question "yes", you need to believe that attempting to gain power and use it ethically and responsibly is more effective at helping people than trying to earn a bunch of money and throwing it at GiveWell's top charities[1], after adjusting for chance of success, which is a pretty high bar to clear. [1] https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

AceJohnny2 5y ago

> But we (the People) don’t trust politicians or business leaders Part of the problem is bad grouping. I trust some politicians, and some business leaders on some topics. But it's too easy to raise your idols on pedestals where they can do no wrong and you trust them on everything. (Conversely, of vilifying an entire class) I've watched it happen to a significant proportion of the US population. Ironically, in those cases I've personally observed, it actually started from a distrust of the "establishment".

harry8 5y ago

We never trusted politicians. We never trusted corporate executives. We never trusted lawyers. We used to trust that the large news organisations were somewhat self-correcting and accountable. The New York Times, Washington post, Wall st Journal, CNN, NBC, CBS, NPR, etc. After the total lack of accountability for Iraq and WMD, for 2 decades of Afghanistan, The Russiagate debacle and you can add a hundred things you've seen clearly yourself to this list. Trusting these news organisations is pathologically insane. They're clearly very happy to fabricate, to repeat and amplify pure propaganda with no evidence as fact and pretend it never happened or we were all in it together as though readers/watchers being duped are the real problem. This is the trust that changed. Lies "for the greater good" have a huge interest rate when the bill comes due. Nobody was ever inclined to really trust Trump, or Clinton or Bush or Obama or Biden any more than Nixon. Why would you? They're politicians. We trusted the limits on their power and the idea that there was corrective feedback on the system somewhere. We used to think we wouldn't be subject to pravda levels of lies from our "diverse" media sources. Maybe we were terribly naive when we thought that. Now we know there are true stories, well reported in the Times and the Journal for example but you can't assume that about any given story, especially if it affects military funding either directly or indirectly. All the WMD pushing assholes appear to be back pushing the next war and again if you think that going to war is not such a great idea given the last few unmitigated disasters you clearly are carrying water for Bin Laden, I mean Saddam, I mean the Taliban, I mean Assad, I mean PUTIN! Trump (damn him) wanted out of Afghanistan like the majority of Americans. Suddenly there's a totally false story, usually fabricated that he's ignoring PUTIN's bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan to swing public opinion against the steps to get out. Biden (let's go) agrees 100% with Trump and American voters that 20 years and 3 trillion is enough and continues Trump's work and gets out. The tone of reporting changes immediately and his popularity plummets. Nobody "trusted" Biden. Nobody "trusted" Trump. Now many, many more of us from all political persuasions are very suspicious of the negative feedback mechanism to keep them in check because it has been abused so very, very badly. Nothing like providing the raw footage and source documents to de-spin. Anyone doing that is the real focus of censorship.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
> We never trusted politicians. We never trusted corporate executives. We never trusted lawyers. And we should keep it that way! These individuals objectives are not aligned with those of Joe & Jill Everyman.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

If there are so many of you then you should start your own platform. There is no reason facebook/twitter/etc have to host your point of view. There is absolutely zero stopping people from doing this. There are conservative oriented web hosting services, put your stuff there and let the money and followers roll in. If your point of view is popular you will draw people in like flies to honey

hn_version_0023 5y ago
I suspect you replied to the wrong person; I’m neither conservative nor interested in people sharing or even really much hearing my point of view.