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Trust has to be earned and kept. You can't force trust. More important than mistrusting institutions is how you mistrust them. Understand their incentives, the

Trust has to be earned and kept. You can't force trust. More important than mistrusting institutions is how you mistrust them. Understand their incentives, their patterns of behavior, their past actions, and hold them up against the theoretical ideals they set for themselves. Far too often I see people mistrusting institutions on lazy, poorly thought out grounds - "government bad, regulations bad, taxes bad, press bad" etc and so forth.

deleted 2y ago
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ethbr1 2y ago
> and hold them up against the theoretical ideals they set for themselves. The perfect being the enemy of the good (and the path to inaction) is the curse of youth. Imperfect institutions can absolutely be better than alternatives. (Often: no thing) It's a hard lesson to learn, but a corollary to it being harder to build something than to tear it down. Yet some things need destroying or reshaping. The best square to the circle I've figured out is 'Don't break things you aren't willing to put ideas, time, and effort into rebuilding.'