Why Social Trust Is Cratering: The Difference Between Elites and Commoners. By Charles Hugh Smith.

It sounds too obvious to be profound: we trust what we own / control. Of course we do. But it becomes profoundly consequential when we add the shadow half of the statement: we don’t trust what we don’t own / control without constant feedback providing verifiable evidence that it is worthy of our trust. …

If we examine all the agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels that control the vast majority of our lives, we find that we have near-zero knowledge or control of any of their inputs, processes or outputs, and so all of these agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels are intrinsically untrustworthy until they consistently prove themselves trustworthy in some verifiable fashion. …

This is why commoners have lost trust in the nation’s agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels, while the top 1% elites that own and control these entities still trust them: they trust them because they serve their interests.

 

 

The commoners intuitively sense these entities do not serve their interests, they only claim to do so to maximize profits / “shareholder value” or to divert attention from the poor quality service/products.

We know the claims being made are false because we experience the absence of transparency and accountability first-hand, and the abysmally low quality of the products and services first-hand.

For example:

When I collect fruits and vegetables I’ve grown here in our yard, I have direct knowledge of what went into the care and nurturing of the plants/trees/soil, so I know that there are no pesticides or herbicides and there are an abundance of micronutrients in our food due to the careful management of compost and fertilizers. …

Compare this to produce labeled “organic” in a supermarket. We are making a great many assumptions about the produce this label is attached to. We assume the agency monitoring the actual farm practices is thorough and accurate, but this is quite stretch in the real world. Are inspectors onsite every day? What exactly do they test? Where are the results posted?

Produce, organic or not, is a commodity, and nobody is testing the nutritive content of the produce. Maybe one field hasn’t been depleted of micronutrients, while the rest have been over-farmed and depleted of the micronutrients we need to be healthy.

Since all produce is a commodity in global markets, they’re all interchangeable: one kilo of organic tomatoes or wheat is interchangeable with any other kilo of organic tomatoes or wheat, so there’s no way to tell if the “organic” produce or meat has high or low nutritive value. All that’s being claimed is that no pesticides or herbicides were applied and whatever compost and fertilizer were applied were organic. That’s entirely different than claiming the produce/meat is high in nutritive value.

Plants have immune systems, too, and a healthy plant provided with sufficient nutrients and water will resist insect infestations, fungi, bacteria, etc. far better than plants raised in depleted soils. Anyone with experience in actually growing fruits and vegetables is keenly alive to signs of nutrient deficiency or infestation. …

Another example:

Now consider social media sites such as Facebook or X/Twitter. You may have noticed that what appears in your feed/scroll changes. These changes are not within our control or transparent; we presume the algos are being tweaked to maximize the income being generated by our content and our attention.

When Big Tech notifies you that your content “violated our community standards,” the violation is not specified, and if you ask, you won’t get a reply or explanation. We have no idea who is seeing what we post, or what’s being done with our attention-data. We have no knowledge or control of these algos and processes, and so they are intrinsically untrustworthy.

Stunning covid example: