Quote of the Day -- On Trust

A low-trust society is a high-cost society.  It creates a place where everything is governed by innumerable rules yet where things work very poorly.  A cop behind every billboard means a lot of low-rent cops.  That’s why low-trust societies are poor societies. By contrast a working democracy is cheap to run and its economic life is generally unfettered and creative.  It is efficient because it does not have to carry the burden of an immense apparatus of propaganda and coercion to get from one day to the next.

--"Game Postponed" by Richard Fernandez.