Whenever you see a public policy issue that seems to be based on totally ignoring logic consider immediately jumping to the word “trust” and analyzing things th

Whenever you see a public policy issue that seems to be based on totally ignoring logic consider immediately jumping to the word “trust” and analyzing things that way. People refuse to take a medicine despite the fact that science says it’s clearly the right move? They don’t trust the scientists. Environmentalists refuse to see this as an engineering and accounting problem? They don’t trust the people who will be responsible for keeping the numbers in balance. And so on. It’s usually much less complicated when you look at things this way. And while I share the desire for the world to head in a more pragmatic direction that coldly analyzes the costs and benefits of policies, at some point we might have to confront the problem of “experts” being fundamentally full of shit across many aspects of public life.