Distrust of government rests on logical inference about incentives, not induction

Evidence

I may believe that government generally benefits me, and I might be right in that belief; but that is merely an inductive generalization grounded in the vague sense that I am better off than I would be without government or the less vague sense that certain policies are actually in my interest. My weak distrust is different. It is grounded in a real understanding of the likely incentives that government officials sometimes face, including the perverse incentive of professional deformation to protect their own agencies. That understanding is not merely an inductive generalization but is rather a logical inference from normal human interests. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 759

Categorization

• XREF: Directly comparable to the reader’s Hardin/Saramago integration — incentive-based logical inference about others’ behavior operates without observability, whereas trust-based familiarity requires it.