Pylimitics

Trust is fundamental to society, to economic systems, to getting through daily life…it might be the most basic and foundational value there is. We need to trust the people and institutions we deal with locally in order to work efficiently and avoid spending time and effort trying to validate and ensure every little thing. In the everyday situation of an intersection, we trust traffic signals to work properly and consistently, trust other drivers to have the same understanding of the signals we do, and to abide by them. We trust other drivers to competently operate their vehicles. 

Trust is built over time by acting consistently — you can trust that a person or organization will act badly if they do that every time. That’s a form of trust too; not in a good sense, but at least you know what to expect. 

Trust-based interactions are everywhere. They’re at every level of society too, as well as interactions between societies. For at least the past century, the United States has in many ways been judged by other nations as worthy of trust. As a trading partner, ally, economic power, and source of education, science, medicine, and engineering. 

The current US regime, though, is destroying that century’s worth of trust. The most obvious realm is probably international trade, where long-standing treaties are being ignored and broken for no apparent reason. It’s not that the US has suddenly become a bad actor. It’s that the US has suddenly become inconsistent. The regime acts randomly, apparently at the momentary whims of a dictator who seems to be demented. 

Paul Krugman details the latest lunacy of the regime, which has declined to renew the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Which the very same regime negotiated, after pulling out of an almost-identical trade agreement (NAFTA) again for no clear reason beyond a personal whim of an addled dictator.