Trust

I've been thinking about trust lately, not so much because of anything in my life, but mostly because I keep seeing this stupid Wells Fargo ad while watching Hulu and it enrages me.

For those who are unaware, Wells Fargo was recently hit with fines north of a billion dollars after it was discovered that they had a widespread practice of employees creating accounts under people's names that they did not ask for or want, this was to meet unreasonable quotas of course, but by all accounts was well known as the practice at all levels of the organization. As usual no one of any actual importance to the company got fired or arrested for it, but a lot of hourly schlubs sure lost their jobs.

Anyway, the company is in damage control mode now and their ads are all about "rebuilding trust", and it's such bullshit. They are asking for forgiveness, and our money, and telling us that they've changed, but knowing even a little of the details of their recent scandal, and their internal response to it, suggests that in fact nothing changed at all, and like most apologies from businesses or public figures, this is more along the lines of "Sorry we got caught" rather than anything actually useful.

It isn't like any of the other big banks, or most of the smaller ones really, are any better of course, but trust is surely in short supply with Wells Fargo at the moment. And they are in a hurry to get it back.

Which then brings up the question of how you go about doing that, or if it is even possible at all. I've been thinking about it and I don't really think it is, either on the micro or the macro level. At best you can get someone to trust you in a different way than they did before, but nothing is really the same. Let's say a husband cheats on his wife and is caught, a not uncommon situation, not all of them end in divorce though, the couples can and do work through it and maintain a relationship. It's hard to have a relationship without trust but my guess is if you get them talking candidly they will admit that their trust is somewhat... modified after that. Perhaps she believes the husband loves her(and maybe he does) and she trusts that he will never cheat again, but that isn't the same as trusting that he will never cheat, full stop. It's a different flavor of trust.

On the macro scale is much the same I think, Wells Fargo, and all the banks, haven't been worthy of our trust for decades of course, with their massive and widespread abuses of the markets being directly responsible for the recent financial crisis. But that is hard to conceptualize on an individual level, millions of cases of identity theft though, well that is somewhat easier and a very good way to prove that banks do not have our best interests at heart. They never really have, but they certainly wanted us to believe they do, and that is pretty hard to do now. Wells Fargo may indeed rebuild trust enough that the average person thinks of them as a safe place to store their money, or get a loan, but I don't think they have any chance of successfully pushing the idea that they are on our side, and that extends to the other major banks as well.

And to the political arena, every decade gets worse, with the scandals and corruption becoming more and more common, and blatant, than they ever were before. Actually that may not really be the case, I suspect that corruption, graft and other abuses of power may have been just as common throughout the twentieth century as they are today, but it is a lot harder to hide stuff in the panopticon public figures live in, and with the difficulty of keeping a secret in the digital age. Some have learned this lesson better than others, the Trump administration is rapidly discovering that their scandals don't matter, that they can do what they like and their polls don't change, why? Because we expect it out of them, the political system is so damaged that the public trust in it has mutated dramatically, we no longer trust our elected representatives to actually represent us, we expect them to be corrupt, our trust in them is only that they will be corrupt in our favor, and when that proves wrong, we can either toss them aside or, and this is the important part, change what "in our favor" means to us.

You want the reason for the rise in poll numbers for the current administration? It can't be a change in policy, it can't be the successful passing of legislation, because neither of those things happen much, it certainly isn't because the multitude of scandals are being put to bed. No it's the electorate deciding that because they trusted this person before, obviously they can't have been wrong to do so, so therefore they must believe what he is doing is right, or at least generally aligned with their values. If that means they have to support a corrupt racist than so be it, the corruption then becomes the cost of doing business in "the swamp" and the racism is a perfectly reasonable reaction to all the crimes done by the illegals. We change what we believe, what we trust in, because to do otherwise is to admit the trust has been misplaced, and people, we really hate being wrong.

This isn't a fixable problem, I personally have no trust in the goodwill of any representative, oh sure I'll vote party line and go as liberal as I find feasible in an election, which is pretty liberal here in Portland, but I have no expectation that those I elect will do anything for me beyond the bare minimum to get reelected and spend the rest of their time enriching themselves. I only ask that they do us the courtesy of being discreet about their corruption. And I really don't even get that.

I'm not alone in these beliefs, and the system surely isn't doing anything to self correct, why should it? As far as it is concerned nothing is wrong. The rich are remaining in power after all, and that is all that really matters under capitalism as we practice it today.