The Social Transformation of Trust in Government (2005) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Social Transformation of Trust in Government (2005) [pdf]

unpan1.un.org

Found this document referenced in an article [1] I read about trust in American institutions. I usually skim these things but I was so surprised to hear that America's dropping trust in institutions is shared internationally that I ended up getting fascinated enough to read it.

I'm especially fascinated by the facts that a) this drop started at roughly the same time for most of these nations (the 1960-70's) and that b) we evidently know that in both Germany and Japan trust in government was rising heavily post-war until this point.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/...

Wish I could say "Because more people read anatomy of state?"

I find radical libertarian ideology more childish and ahistorical than socialism. A strong state is a miracle that has enabled humanity's most amazing achievements. There is almost no history of societies without a strong state because without a strong state humanity has proven time and again that it is unable to achieve much more than violent tribalism.

The State is a parasite that feeds off the productive class. People have been prospering as a result of technology and the market in spite of the state.

> "There is almost no history of societies without a strong state"

Umm, what about the Renaissance which happened in relatively small & weak Italian city-states.

Human beings have always lived in organized societies, and indeed cannot survive without them.

Once you move from foraging to agriculture, inevitably it leads to large states. The only question is how much power the state will have. There has never been a large society in which the state has as little power as the libertarians wish, and I doubt there ever will be.

As to the market and modern technology, they exist only because there is a state to guarantee things like paper money and contracts, and to sponsor scientific research and also new technologies like the internet.

Organized society != State. Agriculture does not require a large state. Just because we haven't had a large society without the state doesn't mean it isn't possible. Money can be provided without government paper, for instance Bitcoin. Contracts can be make without the government, for example etherium. Anarcho-captitalism provides a framework for which contract enforcement can be provided in a distributed p2p fashion. People may still pool their resources to sponsor scientific research and new technologies. Considering that people are willing to do these things nowadays means that people will still be willing to do these things without a state.

Laughable. Strong states exists off satellite cultures, until they collapse from the plaque of stupid that grows around their weak inbreed elite.

What does libertarianism do to avert the breeding of "weak elites"? it seems to me that it is a justification of accumulation of wealtha nd social power and therefore would be even worse in terms of enabling inbred dumb elites coasting on accumulated power

Am I just dense or are the figures in this paper completely unrelated to the text?

Nope, it took me a while before I realized I wasn't just stupid and that that graphs were completely unrelated too.

Here's a link to a version that seems to have the correct graphs: http://sci-hub.cc/10.1080/03906700500038819

I found Figure 3 particularly striking. Education (pre-1950) used to be correlated with greater trust in government, now it's correlated with less.

Civics courses are and were little more than rote indoctrination in the status quo. It makes you appreciate the political system. (E.g., take them in the UK and you will learn how great monarchy is.) But our current education policy has less civics now.

I'm not sure if you're referencing the paper or not, but its conclusion lead me to a similar idea. The author points out that previously, higher education was mostly reserved for the elites of society and that its increasing prevalence among developed countries happened around the same time greater education began to gradually change from being correlated with greater trust in government to being correlated with less.

The obvious idea I had was that a greater amount of people were coming into contact with more information about the various failures their government (and every government) has. People are getting a "reverse civics" class now -- and in a way, ignorance was bliss.

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