Inspired by a few other posts and memes flying about. When I was young movies and tbh real life you would come across old people telling you that can’t trust the gov. To keep your cash at home etc. tell em nothing.
I am feeling it. I always assumed maybe about 60 it will happen to me. I kinda linked it to idle minds or a cognitive decline but lack of trust for me has arrived a lot earlier and I think I can rationalise to myself it’s more based on the gov actions rather than my circumstances.
So wha do you think in the magic age number that trust in the gov erodes? I’ll start. 42.
When I was about 20 in college I learned that saying shit like ‘the government’ is stupid. Because there is no ‘the government’.
There are agencies, institutions, and individuals in the government. All with varying levels of competence and corruption and incentives. Some of them are amazing, others are really shitty. Just like people or companies or anything. There are also multiple levels of government and so many people are angry at the feds over property taxes which has nothing to do with the feds.
And I learned to avoid interacting with people who think in massive generalized terms about anything, because they tend to be very emotional and very irrational.
I fully endorse this point, but with an added caveat. The government is made up of people, just like any other organization, but there is often less money to be had in the public sector than the private sector (corruption notwithstanding) so often you wind up with people passionate about their work, but occasionally you have people who aren’t talented enough to hack it in the private sector.
Sadly, most people who understand this seem to just lurk.
Maybe each unhinged commenter scares away a nuanced commenter and a bit, until some kind of equilibrium is reached.