Ungrounded faith in government always serves interests worse than grounded expectations do

Evidence

If you have ungrounded faith in me, that might benefit me (but not you) by getting you to do things for me out of misplaced trust. If you have ungrounded faith in our government, that would benefit me only if that government happens to serve my interests fairly well and if, as we may assume, your faith in the government helps to license its actions and reduces the chance of its being successfully challenged by you and similarly placed others. Hence in the United States, ungrounded faith by the upper middle class might be okay for that class (because to license the government’s continuation of its policies would not harm their interests). However, because the government might actually be thought to do a good job of serving their interests anyway, that class might also have correct, grounded expectations that it will do so. It makes little sense to say that the interests of the large American underclass would be better served by its faith in the government than if it—or its leaders and advocates—pushed government to be more responsive to those interests. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how any group’s interests would be served better by its having ungrounded faith than having grounded expectations. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 742

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ungrounded faith from grounded expectations as two different orientations toward institutions.
• XREF: Connects to Luhmann’s ‘familiarity’ vs. ‘trust’ distinction — Saramago’s Blindness shows grounded expectations collapsing when observability fails.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: faith in institutions as a class interest — who benefits when the underclass trusts rather than presses.