| Top 5 reasons I don't trust the government 1. Many of the regulatory systems which are supposed to protect the populace have been captured or have their effectiveness impaired by special interests, ie. the revolving door between the SEC and Wall Street, the FDA and Big Pharma, and DOE and Big Oil 2. Even when our institutions are not captured there is a perverse logic supporting institutional missions that lead to abuse of power. The Tuskegee experiment makes perfect sense you've got to have a control group in order to better understand the pathology so you can better protect the populace. 3. Poor execution or formation of government policies that would in any other profession be cause for malpractice or being disbarred or worse are routinely foisted upon the populace. 4. Corruption 5. Increasingly your rights and legal protections are seen by institutions as being granted by those institutions instead of being protected by those institutions. Your rights are correctly perceived by the institutions as hindrances to their institutional missions. Better legal policies wouldn't even crack the top 5 reason for me to trust government. We are way beyond wonky tweaks to our legal system. All of the above essentially boils down to accountability. If policy makers and lawmakers could be held legally accountable for policy mistakes, possibly even financially responsible for the mayhem they cause I for one would feel a much closer allegiance to our government. |