Summary

America is experiencing a crisis of trust – in government, business, media, education, medicine, science, and each other – all at historic lows. The breakdown has two root causes: a growing gulf between elites and everyone else (globalists vs. nationalists, economic inequality, corporate gigantism) and the sheer size of institutions that have become too large to be accountable. The result is a vicious cycle: no accountability breeds more distrust, truth declines, and inefficiencies multiply. Restoring function requires reviving faith in the American project itself – not through nostalgia, but through institutional reform that closes the gap between elites and ordinary citizens.

Key Takeaways

Notes

Introduction

• Last 20 years are “dispiriting”
  • Political strife, division
  • Stagnating economic performance
  • Financial instability
  • Proliferation in social pathologies: addiction, loneliness, suicide etc.
  • Failed military operations
  • Rise of authoritarian challengers
• ↑ thus, loss in faith of American values
• Mistrust vs distrust
• Media: ideology > objective truth
• Loss of trust, confidence ↓
  • The modern elite focuses on the disdainful history of the US
  • Regular Americans believe in maintaining core values (conservatism)
• No accountability → viscous cycle
• Broad loss of trust in institutions → loss in mutual trust
• “The US is in the grip of a modern ideology that disowns its own genius, denounces its own success, disdains merit, elevates victimhood, embraces societal self-loathing, and enforces it all in a web of exclusionary and authoritarian rules”
• Must start by reviving faith in US itself

1: The great distrust

• Trust when taking a flight*
• “Trust is the essential feature that allows society to exist”
• Social capital: the network of trust we build up in our relationships
• Trust in other individuals is backed up by trust in institutions (eg. the law)
• Gallup poll (50+ years): all time lows:
  • Govt, big business, media, public education, medical, science, technology
• Plummeting social trust
• Institutions have become untrustworthy
• Big business are “propagandists of an ideology” (corporate capitalism)
• Both parties are channeling the foundations of democracy
• “Post-truth era”
• “As truth declines, inefficiencies multiply”
• Blame:
  • Loneliness + individualism?
  • Most people assume Trump in 2015
  • Conservatives ceding distrust in gov’t with anti-big gov’t rhetoric
    • Wrong. Dems do this too
  • Cultural narcissism
  • ↓
• 1. Gulf between elites and everyone else
  • Globalists vs nationalists
  • Critical race theory (white capitalists)
  • “Contempt for most ordinary Americans”
  • Economic inequality
• 2. Sheer size
  • Of largest companies, including share of total economy
  • Less entrepreneurship
  • Size of gov’t (35% of GDP)
  • Size of colleges
  • Bureaucracy
• 3. Internet
  • Equal access to info online → individuals > institutions
  • ↑ amateurs can misinterpret data

2: Gov’t distrust

• “Distrust in gov’t is an American virtue”
• “Gov’t is a necessary evil”
• Declining confidence in gov’t, rising intensity
• Distrust in judicial branch
• 3 factors of mistrust in gov’t institutions:
  • Political performance
  • Hyper-partisanship
  • Technocratic failure
• Political performance
  • Eg. Iraq war eroded trust
  • Economic stagnation
    • Demographics: aging + women
  • Financial crisis
    • Uneven distribution of support
• Hyper-partisanship
  • 1994: 17-24% overlap of voters
  • 2024: 4-5% overlap
  • ↑ bigger threat to values
  • US is entrenched 50/50
• Technocratic elites
  • Eg. Allen Greenspan Fed → financial crisis
  • Covid public health officials
  • Undermined trust in the idea of an expert
• More taxes, fewer benefits

3: Corporate distrust

• Americans largely believe in capitalism and corporate more than gov’t
• Over-embraced globalism
• Trust in big business:
  • 1999: 30% high, 25% little/none
  • 2022: 14% high, 41% little/none
• Factors in loss of faith in big business:
  • Corporate scandals w/o accountability
  • Globalization
  • Inequality (CEO pay)
  • Scale of companies
  • Manipulation of political system
  • Vehicles for progressive ideology
• Corporate scandals
  • Rotten corporate governance
  • Manipulation of system
    • Eg. Theranos, FTX
• Lack of commitment to American’s values
  • Globalization, overseas manufacturing
  • CEO pay
• Relentless pursuit of scale
  • Distance b/w citizens and companies
  • Less competition in business (M&A)
  • Primarily due to increased barriers to entry thru lobbying, buying influence
• Corporate political power
• Adoption of progressive ideology
  • ESG
  • Intolerance for other ideologies
• Globalism / WEF
  • National gov’ts as relics of the past
  • Near unified globalist mindset
  • The town hall of globalism
  • Globalism → benefiting capitalists, developing countries, hurting middle class
  • ↑ created Trump
• ↑ secular ideology:
  • 1. Belief in climate alarmism
  • 2. ESG (Blackrock)
    • Reduced ROI
    • “Wokeonomics”

4: News media distrust

• Share of people who trust the news:
  • 2017: 43%
  • 2022: 26%
• Inverse correlation between news’ self-importance and trust in the news
• Trump turned news into seeming like propaganda
• News → objective info → accountability → functioning of democracy
• Media’s excuse for loss of trust: misinformation → Gresham’s law
• ↑ in fact, news was never unbiased. Liberal and progressive ideology
• Why did press become partisan?
  • Who entered the field
    • Craft → art
    • Overrun by educated elites
• Commercial in-character
  • Collapse in news revenue → either 1) maximize reach or 2) subscriber model
• Share of journalists who are democrat:
  • 1971: 1.5 to 1
  • 2021: 4 to 1
• Calls for no objective truth / reality
  • Post-modernism, CRT

5: Education system distrust

• Factors:
  • Authoritarian progressivism
  • Postmodern ideology (gender etc.)
  • Political conformity
  • Ballooning costs, smaller reward
  • Diminishing accessibility
• “Intolerant extremism”, homogeneity
• Universities positive - negative effect:
  • 2010: 61% pos, 26% neg
  • 2019: 50% pos, 38% neg
• Professor political lean:
  • 1990: 42% left, 40% mid, 18% right
  • 2017: 60% left, 12% right
• “North Korea levels of political conformity”
• CRT / structuralist theory: systemic racism, patriarchy, etc.
  • Much like Marxism
• ↑ anti-racism creates “us vs them”
• Flaws in admissions:
  • Affirmative action
  • Legacy
  • Wealthy skew of elite schools

6: Social media

• Editorial control / political bias of tech platforms → manipulation
• Factors of mistrust in big tech:
  • Political divisions caused by manipulation
  • Fears about privacy, security
  • Job automation
  • Mental health of phones
• Trust in tech:
  • 2022: 57% (social media: 46% (last))
  • 2012: 78%
• Scale, reach, cross-cutting
  • Pervasiveness of top 5 tech companies
• “Anti-democratic paradox of the internet”
  • Aids authoritarian regimes more than it does for “the people”
• Progressive bias of GenAI
• Dependency on devices creates resentment
  • Lack of autonomy
• Deep cognitive effects of phone use
• Harmful effects of social media
• Possible measures:
  • Less partisan management
  • Publisher responsibility
  • Payment for personal data
  • Better filtering (eg. for children)
  • Big tech breakup

7: Science and medicine distrust

• Trust in science and medicine is flat on the whole, but deeply partisan
• Confidence in scientific community:
  • 2000 → 2021
  • Republican: 47% → 34%
  • Democrat: 46% → 64%
• False causes:
  • Superstition, false information
  • Growing educational divide (parties)
• Covid alarmism of public health officials, media
  • Fauci “I am science”
• “Prioritization of wider social goals over the Hippocratic oath”
• Gender dysphoria, transgenderism*
• Climate change alarmism
• Scientists are becoming activists

8: Mutual mistrust

• America is historically more individualistic → less mutual trust
• Mutual trust: “the confidence people have in their fellow citizens to do the right thing, behave honorably, honor the concerns, interests, and beliefs of one another”
• ↑ common purpose. The most essential form of trust there is
• Social capital: a network of relationships and mutual trust
• “Most people can be trusted”:
  • 1970: ~50%
  • Huge age skew:
    • >65 → 71%
    • <29 → 40%
  • 2021: ~33%
• ↑ unique to the US
• 3 sets of explanations for ↑:
  • Corruption
  • Inequality
  • Racial diversity + segregation
• Inequality
  • Share of top 1% / bottom 50% income
  • Wealth of household tiers
  • Responsible for 44% of decline in trust
  • But has stalled in US since 2011
• Race
  • % of US adults saying race relationships are good:
    • 2001: 70% blacks, 62% whites
    • 2013: 66% blacks, 72% whites
    • 2021: 33% blacks, 43% whites
  • More high-profile incidents
  • Democratic + Latino influx narrative
• Politics + ideology
  • Other party viewed as morally inferior
• Decline of civic engagement (Putnam)
  • 1. women working
  • 2. suburbanization
  • 3. electronic entertainment
• ↑ lack of serendipity narrows interests
• High correlation between social and political trust
  • Echo chambers / “self-reinforcing majorities”
  • 38% → 60% of voters live in landslide counties
• Family + religious faith:
  • 30+ YO women married:
    • 1962: 71%
    • 2019: 42%
  • Children born to unmarried women:
    • 1960: 5%
    • 2018: 40%
  • Church-goers:
    • 1999: 70%
    • 2020: 47%
  • US no religion in last 20y: 8% → 21%
  • Humanist religion (eg. climate change)

9: Conclusions: rebuilding trust

• We’ve had low mutual trust before: don’t bet against the US
  • Eg. Civil War
• Shamefulness of lying in politics
  • Objective truth → partisan authority truth
• 80% of US believes this can be fixed ↑
• 1. gov’t
  • Work to dismantle the institutional structures that incentivize polarization
    • Limit power of extreme partisan voices
    • Changes to state districting rules
    • Primary elections → jungle primaries
    • Greater gov’t transparency, accountability
  • Raise the quality of political discourse and leadership
• 2. media: abandoned objectivity, embrace of ideological perspective (commercial imperative to appeal to partisan audiences)
  • Separate reporting from opinion
  • Transparency, accountability
  • More diversity (non-elite backgrounds)
• 3. big business: scale + remoteness, globalization
  • Re-shoring (reduce globalization)
  • Restrict lobbying
  • Reform campaign financing
  • Corporate gov’t changes (accountability)
• 4. technology
  • More diverse hiring
  • Standing up to activist employees
  • More competition in tech
  • To address privacy concerns, start paying people for their data
• 5. education
  • More diversity of thought
  • Embrace free speech (eg. big companies only hiring those who demonstrate a tolerance for other views)
• 6. science + medicine: advance ideological prescriptions in the guise of scientific discovery
  • Release ideological grips
  • Accept that science is uncertain
• Gulf between elites and citizens:
  • Reduce economic inequality
  • Scale: greater for the top 1%
    • Due to globalization, decline in union power, deregulation, growth of the financial sector, and tax changes
  • Middle class has stagnated.
    • 62% → 43% (2018)
  • No longer perceived as “fair”: talent, merit, and hard work
  • —
  • Reverse globalization (domestic manufacturing)
  • Less big corporations
  • Accountability to shareholders
  • De-bloat the financial sector
  • —
  • Meritocracy → harder to learn gratitude and humility
• Go small and local: shift power from center to periphery
  • Eg. central vs state vs local gov’t trust levels
  • “Local communities can be laboratories for trust building - to confront partisan tensions and overcome tribal divisions”
• National life is politicized, local life is practical
  • Shift focus from national to local
• 1980-2000 restored some trust in institutions:
  • “Renaissance in American self-confidence”
• ↑ now, entire class of politicians seem diminished
  • Lawmaking + execution > performance
• Overarching reason for lost of trust in our key institutions: “widening gulf between a highly educated globalized elite who’s values are at odds with other Americans”
• Causes:
  • Gulf of the elites
  • Economic inequality
  • Scale + remoteness of institutions
  • Disappointment at recent performance
• Study: the left is becoming radical faster
  • +29% left as liberal, +13% right as conservative