I think that the advancement of the "science" of marketing has left us all jaded. Public figures do not speak like normal humans, they communicate in PR-ese, saying as little as possible with flowery speech.
We're subjected to so much marketing and PR spin that we've become immune to it. Look at Twitter and how that's evolved -- one of their big business models is gathering TV viewer sentiment in real-time. I think that we've all been trained to distrust most things communicated in a public setting, because chances are that somebody is selling something.
Why question whether or not our suspicion is greater or less than it was in some bygone era?
It's like saying, "Cancer survival rates are much better now than they were a hundred years ago, so let's question peoples' motivation for continuing to battle cancer."
Systems that obviate the need for authorities can be just as corrupt* and stupid as the authorities themselves. Systems should be treated with the same level of skepticism as powerful individuals. It's a shame that they usually aren't.
* By "corrupt" I mean that a system arbitrarily facilitates the self-interest of a small group of people over others. Symmetric starting conditions aren't enough; instability breaks initial symmetries faster than a kid breaks toys.
And don't think you can check it yourself - for 99.9% of people that's impossible. And don't say "so trust that 0.1% of people" because you did nothing except add a layer of indirection.
Interestingly, twitter sort of does this, in that it sort of works like a web of trust. One difference is that the main mechanism of trust propagation is endorsement of statements (retweet) rather than endorsement of people (follow).
Has anybody ever trusted people in authority? During the bootlegger era, it was common for public officials to be quite openly on the take. Can you even imagine,[1] something like that being tolerated today?
What is different,[2] now is that trust has been eroded in institutions. I think people in my parents generation (born in the early 1950's) still believe that government more or less acts in the best interests of the people.[3] I think that belief is a lot less common in my generation, and I'm quite past the age of generic rebelliousness (born mid 1980's).
What strikes me as interesting are two related facts:
1) Those who are the most distrustful of government tend to skew libertarian; but
2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government.[4]
Measures that should be increasing trust in the system are having the opposite effect. In the 1970's, it was considered reasonable for government to outright set prices and rates. Today, even subsidies draw strong attack.
To be fair, I agree with much of the agenda of deregulation since the 1970's, so this isn't a criticism of that trend. But I also believe a nation can't do great things if people don't have faith in its basic institutions. It is, to me, one of the most striking differences between the West and the East, and I don't think it's coincidental that societal prosperity is highly correlated with the amount of faith people have in their basic institutions.
[1] Without resorting to the facile false equivalency between campaign donations and outright bribery.
[2] Although not new--it has been described elsewhere that these moods are cyclic.
[3] It can be argued that the government really does act in the interests of upper middle class baby boomers (like my parents).
[4] People will contest this, but it's hard to argue with the facts. From 1970 to 2002, federal spending exclusive of interest, social security, and medicare dropped from 15% of GDP to 10% of GDP. It spiked during the recession, but is trending back towards hitting 10% by early in the next decade. Deregulation has moved similarly. We might complain about lack of competition in telecom today, but in 1970 AT&T was still a sanctioned, national monopoly.
"2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government."
I think the problem is there is a ton of rhetoric about deregulation and smaller government but in practice if you look very close government is mostly much bigger and a lot of the things that have been "deregulated" aren't subject to the competition that deregulation implies because of the nature of the industries involved.
Sure you can deregulate electric rates but you still don't have a choice in who carries that power to your house. On the other hand look at an industry like car dealerships where deregulating would actually improve things and people fight tooth and nail to keep it because they know there is no natural barrier to protect their profits.
> 2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government.[4]
Pretty much every single libertarian I talk to would vehemently disagree here. Drug laws, war on terror, militarization of police, copyright and patent expansion, the massive and growing number of prisoners (more in absolute numbers than China!), money transmitter laws, safety regulations, the NSA, the perpetually growing number of federal and state regulations per year, etc are usually cited (also, many libertarians throw in growing welfare spending, which I'm obliged to include even though I personally find it vastly less offensive than something like throwing black people in jail for a parking ticket). There is actually a good theory that explains the disparity between this and the high-profile deregulation cases: in the case of laws that substantially harm very specific and powerful groups, there is a strong and concentrated interest in repealing them, so they get repealed. On the other hand, in the case of micro-nuisances targeting small entrepreneurs fighting against the law a public goods problem, where each individual person has insufficient incentive to do anything about it.
So, some old relatives of mine would counter that the fact that they can't bribe public officials anymore is actually somewhat of the problem.
They grew up in the old Chicago machine, and it was well-known that you could take your grievances (as well as perhaps a contribution) to your alderman to get things like potholes fixed or what have you.
I think that the problem isn't necessarily corruption per se, but that it is out of reach of the community members who would benefit most from it.
During the bootlegger era, it was common for public officials to be quite openly on the take
Is that the measure? That politicians have to be openly on the take for the modern citizen to be justified in distrusting authority? As with most of society, the corruption has better marketing today vs 80 or 90 years ago. Why take an open bribe when it's so easy to funnel money to family and contributors through the passing of bills that include earmarks for them?
now is that trust has been eroded in institutions
We've had the better part of a century to watch as one big program after another has been implemented, limped along sucking more and more money, and now is doomed to failure unless yet more money is thrown after them: Medicare, Social Security, etc.
We've watched the government go to war against poverty and drugs yet fail to move the needle.
We've watched as everything the government gets involved in: public school, health care, student loans, home loans, etc. fails in fundamental ways without ever being scrapped or replaced with something better.
Today, even subsidies draw strong attack
... but then nothing really ever happens about them, or they're shuffled around.
[4] People will contest this, but
Government expenditures != amount and effect of regulation.
That's all nice, but there is significant room for improvement.
In almost every measure of quality of life the US ranks low to middling compared to generally less-wealthy industrialized nations. We score #12 in the human development index, and all our #1s are in bad things like surveillance, military spending, prison population, etc. We don't inherently suck, we just spend vastly more on cops, prosecutors, prisons, soldiers, and surveillance.
The surveillance state does more than delegitimize as discredit the government, it takes vast resources away from providing the good things government can do. Trading individually corrupt and brutal police for militarized and insanely armed police only enables us to say "Tut, tut, but that use of force was legal." That's not an improvement. It just costs more.
Done. I also removed the author name from the title. For the most part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I learned from pg for keeping the focus on content rather than personalities. Of course there are always exceptions.
Maybe it has something to do with our government killing more Native Americans than the Nazi's killed Jews, imprisoning Japenese Americans during WWII, using nukes, and more recently Orwellian Surveillance and drone strikes against American Citizens without trial.
And these are just the facts. I haven't even gone into any extremely plausible "conspiracy" theories.
It's full of trivia the way only British can write, but I skimmed it, and I guess a rough TLDR is...
Today the establishment (a term invented in the 1950s) can read the mass psychology's wants (via technological means) and fulfil them (directly, in order to remedy popular discontent) instead of engaging in old-school frame-up tactics.
Note that the article doesn't disclaim continued use of these tactics though, so it's not really drawing any particularly informative or useful conclusions.
The entire concept of authority is inherently suspicious. It's so easy to confuse it for people with advantages using their advantages to enjoy their advantages.
It's easy to tack on the word "inherent" here, but it's misused. There's nothing inherently suspicious about authority. The Zeitgeist, though, is so strong that it's difficult to think of counterexamples, and easy to believe that how you perceive it now is how it's always been.
[+] [-] Spooky23|12 years ago|reply
We're subjected to so much marketing and PR spin that we've become immune to it. Look at Twitter and how that's evolved -- one of their big business models is gathering TV viewer sentiment in real-time. I think that we've all been trained to distrust most things communicated in a public setting, because chances are that somebody is selling something.
[+] [-] applecore|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crusso|12 years ago|reply
Why question whether or not our suspicion is greater or less than it was in some bygone era?
It's like saying, "Cancer survival rates are much better now than they were a hundred years ago, so let's question peoples' motivation for continuing to battle cancer."
[+] [-] jjoonathan|12 years ago|reply
* By "corrupt" I mean that a system arbitrarily facilitates the self-interest of a small group of people over others. Symmetric starting conditions aren't enough; instability breaks initial symmetries faster than a kid breaks toys.
[+] [-] ars|12 years ago|reply
And don't think you can check it yourself - for 99.9% of people that's impossible. And don't say "so trust that 0.1% of people" because you did nothing except add a layer of indirection.
[+] [-] im3w1l|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afiler|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yiedyie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
What is different,[2] now is that trust has been eroded in institutions. I think people in my parents generation (born in the early 1950's) still believe that government more or less acts in the best interests of the people.[3] I think that belief is a lot less common in my generation, and I'm quite past the age of generic rebelliousness (born mid 1980's).
What strikes me as interesting are two related facts:
1) Those who are the most distrustful of government tend to skew libertarian; but
2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government.[4]
Measures that should be increasing trust in the system are having the opposite effect. In the 1970's, it was considered reasonable for government to outright set prices and rates. Today, even subsidies draw strong attack.
To be fair, I agree with much of the agenda of deregulation since the 1970's, so this isn't a criticism of that trend. But I also believe a nation can't do great things if people don't have faith in its basic institutions. It is, to me, one of the most striking differences between the West and the East, and I don't think it's coincidental that societal prosperity is highly correlated with the amount of faith people have in their basic institutions.
[1] Without resorting to the facile false equivalency between campaign donations and outright bribery.
[2] Although not new--it has been described elsewhere that these moods are cyclic.
[3] It can be argued that the government really does act in the interests of upper middle class baby boomers (like my parents).
[4] People will contest this, but it's hard to argue with the facts. From 1970 to 2002, federal spending exclusive of interest, social security, and medicare dropped from 15% of GDP to 10% of GDP. It spiked during the recession, but is trending back towards hitting 10% by early in the next decade. Deregulation has moved similarly. We might complain about lack of competition in telecom today, but in 1970 AT&T was still a sanctioned, national monopoly.
[+] [-] pmorici|12 years ago|reply
I think the problem is there is a ton of rhetoric about deregulation and smaller government but in practice if you look very close government is mostly much bigger and a lot of the things that have been "deregulated" aren't subject to the competition that deregulation implies because of the nature of the industries involved.
Sure you can deregulate electric rates but you still don't have a choice in who carries that power to your house. On the other hand look at an industry like car dealerships where deregulating would actually improve things and people fight tooth and nail to keep it because they know there is no natural barrier to protect their profits.
[+] [-] vbuterin|12 years ago|reply
Pretty much every single libertarian I talk to would vehemently disagree here. Drug laws, war on terror, militarization of police, copyright and patent expansion, the massive and growing number of prisoners (more in absolute numbers than China!), money transmitter laws, safety regulations, the NSA, the perpetually growing number of federal and state regulations per year, etc are usually cited (also, many libertarians throw in growing welfare spending, which I'm obliged to include even though I personally find it vastly less offensive than something like throwing black people in jail for a parking ticket). There is actually a good theory that explains the disparity between this and the high-profile deregulation cases: in the case of laws that substantially harm very specific and powerful groups, there is a strong and concentrated interest in repealing them, so they get repealed. On the other hand, in the case of micro-nuisances targeting small entrepreneurs fighting against the law a public goods problem, where each individual person has insufficient incentive to do anything about it.
[+] [-] angersock|12 years ago|reply
They grew up in the old Chicago machine, and it was well-known that you could take your grievances (as well as perhaps a contribution) to your alderman to get things like potholes fixed or what have you.
I think that the problem isn't necessarily corruption per se, but that it is out of reach of the community members who would benefit most from it.
[+] [-] crusso|12 years ago|reply
Is that the measure? That politicians have to be openly on the take for the modern citizen to be justified in distrusting authority? As with most of society, the corruption has better marketing today vs 80 or 90 years ago. Why take an open bribe when it's so easy to funnel money to family and contributors through the passing of bills that include earmarks for them?
now is that trust has been eroded in institutions
We've had the better part of a century to watch as one big program after another has been implemented, limped along sucking more and more money, and now is doomed to failure unless yet more money is thrown after them: Medicare, Social Security, etc.
We've watched the government go to war against poverty and drugs yet fail to move the needle.
We've watched as everything the government gets involved in: public school, health care, student loans, home loans, etc. fails in fundamental ways without ever being scrapped or replaced with something better.
Today, even subsidies draw strong attack
... but then nothing really ever happens about them, or they're shuffled around.
[4] People will contest this, but
Government expenditures != amount and effect of regulation.
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
In almost every measure of quality of life the US ranks low to middling compared to generally less-wealthy industrialized nations. We score #12 in the human development index, and all our #1s are in bad things like surveillance, military spending, prison population, etc. We don't inherently suck, we just spend vastly more on cops, prosecutors, prisons, soldiers, and surveillance.
The surveillance state does more than delegitimize as discredit the government, it takes vast resources away from providing the good things government can do. Trading individually corrupt and brutal police for militarized and insanely armed police only enables us to say "Tut, tut, but that use of force was legal." That's not an improvement. It just costs more.
[+] [-] sp332|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yiedyie|12 years ago|reply
Please, can a moderator correct this? Thanks.
[+] [-] dang|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jophde|12 years ago|reply
And these are just the facts. I haven't even gone into any extremely plausible "conspiracy" theories.
[+] [-] Wingman4l7|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naturalethic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personjerry|12 years ago|reply
I'm Canadian and find that often Canadians believe our government is doing fine and is trustworthy, simply because of Canada's supposed reputation.
[+] [-] clockworkelf|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] taybin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contingencies|12 years ago|reply
Today the establishment (a term invented in the 1950s) can read the mass psychology's wants (via technological means) and fulfil them (directly, in order to remedy popular discontent) instead of engaging in old-school frame-up tactics.
Note that the article doesn't disclaim continued use of these tactics though, so it's not really drawing any particularly informative or useful conclusions.
[+] [-] nirnira|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] benched|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StephenBuckley|12 years ago|reply