
Suspicious Minds – Why No One Trusts People In Authority - yiedyie
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-MINDS
======
Spooky23
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.

------
applecore
Build systems that obviate the need for trusted authorities.

~~~
ars
You still have to trust whoever built the system.

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.

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, once the system works it's easy to trust, and it tends to stay that way.

The problem, as jjoonathan said, is when it does not work. I'd say that it's
worse than a corrupt politician, because the politician is much easier to
replace (if you are not under a system that makes all of them equally
corrupt).

------
afiler
This is by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis)
, who's done some amazing documentary work in the past, asking a lot of "big
questions" like this.

~~~
yiedyie
I saw The Century of the self and then I wanted to see them all.

~~~
joshbert
The Century of the Self is one of my five favorite documentaries, I would
recommend it to anyone regardless of profession.

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
pmorici
"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.

~~~
rayiner
That's just not true. Deregulation in everything from telecommunications to
highways to airlines to labor is real and the impact has been undeniable. For
example, airline deregulation in 1977 enabled FedEx and UPS to buy airplanes,
enabling the modern era of package delivery and companies like Amazon. People
fail to appreciate just how regulated things were in the 1970's. Measures that
agencies wouldn't dream of today, like outright rate setting, were commonplace
back then.

Assertions to the effect of "the government is bigger than ever" are just
unsubstantiated hand-waving. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP,
excluding interest, social security, and medicare, is down from 15% to 10%.
That reflects a real and dramatic shrinking of the scope of government.

You can argue that deregulation hasn't had the same impact proponents
suggested, but it's all relative. Industries with economics of scale tend
towards monopoly or duopoly in the absence of regulation. The fact that
deregulated industries still often exhibit oligopolies isn't proof that
deregulation was just rhetoric. Search, desktop operating systems, consumer
microprocessors, and package delivery have all trended towards having one or
two dominant players, yet those industries never had regulated monopoly
incumbents.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
"Assertions to the effect of "the government is bigger than ever" are just
unsubstantiated hand-waving. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP,
excluding interest, social security, and medicare, is down from 15% to 10%.
That reflects a real and dramatic shrinking of the scope of government"

Excluding my fat, belly, and arse, I've actually lost weight...

~~~
rayiner
I exclude those things because they're not generally what people think of when
they think "government overhead." They're not rooms full of bureaucrats
writing pages of regulations nor are they fat-cat contractors. They're
transfer payments with very low bureaucratic overhead. Moreover, at least in
the case of Social Security, it represents withdrawals of money previously
paid into the system.

Look at it this way. Say a very small, Milton Friedman-ish society institutes
a basic income, funded by a tax. It might have spending as a percentage of GDP
of 30%, but would you say it necessarily has a "big government?"

~~~
ACow_Adonis
Maybe its because I'm economic-y, and while measures of "big" and "small" are
relative...yes, yes I would. I'd say of course we have to include that as a
measure of how much of a role the government plays in the society. This is
with no judgment about whether this is a good/bad thing.

The things you're excluding (though defense wasn't mentioned), are the
main/majority expenditure categories of government. There's even good reason
to believe that shrinkage in other areas merely come in some part from natural
accounting of a substitution effect as expenditure has been transferred to
these areas. I can accept that you're excluding them from analysis because
they're not what the man on the street thinks of as "government overhead", but
whatever is left over can no longer really be said to be representative of the
government we actually have or the role it actually plays in our lives and
society.

~~~
rayiner
I disagree. A federal bureaucracy that costs $500 billion per year to operate
has a very different impact, both socially and economically, than a simple
transfer payment of $500 billion within the economy.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
Except in reality you cannot ever separate the two. Money doesn't just happen.
Transfers don't just happen. There is no "neutral" way of transferring money.
Everything has to happen in a context and via a real material existent system
of interests and resources playing off one other...

I can comment on a $500 billion "simple transfer" separate from a bureaucracy,
government, population and politics of sufficient size and complexity to
actually achieve it in the same way that I can comment on how the extra mass
of Santa's obesity is hindering him from delivering his presents efficiently
at Christmas each year...

Which is to say, forming a serious opinion on it implies ignorance about the
true nature of what it is we are discussing (a fantastical non-existent entity
and an inherently impossible state of affairs).

Or at the very least it requires a willing suspension of disbelief purely for
the purposes of entertainment...

------
yiedyie
I linked to the entire blog instead of this specific post:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-
MINDS](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-MINDS)

Please, can a moderator correct this? Thanks.

~~~
dang
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.

~~~
yiedyie
Thanks again, no need for the author in the title, who has seen his
documentaries will notice his name instantly on the article, if not his style
will be obvious in the first video.

------
jophde
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.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Like this fan favorite:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods)

------
personjerry
I disagree with the generalization of the statement of this title. I think
it's part of the political culture of wherever you live.

I'm Canadian and find that often Canadians believe our government is doing
fine and is trustworthy, simply because of Canada's supposed reputation.

------
taybin
This is pretty rambling. Can someone summarize it?

~~~
contingencies
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.

------
benched
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.

~~~
StephenBuckley
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.

~~~
benched
I have no idea what you're saying, so I'll just add to my point. Did authority
originate as 'the people' purposefully vesting some of their power into one or
more leaders, in order to organize society more effectively? Or is that how we
post-rationalize the state we're born into?

~~~
naturalethic
I think you're on to something...

