The US is experiencing a great decline in trust. According to the US General Social Survey, people who agreed with the statement "most people can be trusted" went from 49% to 25% between 1984 and 2022.^[1]

Trust in institutions is also falling. Over that same period trust in the government fell from 42% to 20%.

For civil services it fell from 56% to 41%, for the police it fell from 74% to 68%, and for congress it fell from 52% to a whopping 15%.^[2]
Even international institutions, like the United Nations, are losing trust, going from 47% to 44%.

It’s not just institutions, organizations are also losing trust. According to the WVS, over that same period public trust in the press declined from 49% to 29%, trust in major companies declined from 49% to 31%, and trust in churches declined from 77% to 53%.

If we allow for shorter timelines we have data for other things that show a similar trend happening between 1998 and 2022. For political parties trust declined from 20% to 11%, for armed forces from 85% to 80%, and for the TV media from 24% to 22%.

The only things that seem to be gaining trust in that same period are, surprisingly, the courts, going from 35% to 57%, and progressive movements: with labor unions going from 30% to 33%, the women’s movement going from 48% to 54%, the environmental protection movement going from 44% to 54%.

What can be done about it?

So major companies are losing trust, while labor unions, environmental movements and women’s movements are gaining trust, to the point that all three are now higher in trust than major companies. This gives us reason to suspect that transforming major companies/organizations into worker co-ops would increase trust, since worker co-ops are better for labor, for women, and for the environment.

I would personally argue that our current political economy is not exactly stellar for all three, but we all know that the last one is the classic example of an externality that’s causing the destruction of a common good (in this case, the climate). I hope this data shows that we’re in a similar situation with another common good: trust.

Unlike greenhouse gases, however, there’s no ready-made way to tackle this inside the current market. I mean, there are many strategies to increase social trust that can be employed outside of the market. I’ve previously talked about one such strategy: democratization. Getting rid o...

Posts

Wiki Contributions

Comments