In 1995 Francis Fukuyama came out with a book called "Trust," in which he argued that a society's capacity for cooperation underpins its prosperity. The same year, Robert Putnam's famous article, "Bowling Alone," lamented that the United States was depleting its stock of precious social capital.
But then he moves from the issue of shared social capital - trusting each other - to the need for people to have faith in the ruling class:
Meanwhile President Bush had enormous foreign policy momentum in 2002-03 because Americans trusted him. Thanks to the Iraq mess, Americans are now focused on holding Bush accountable, and his options are limited.
There are powerful reasons trust tends to decline and accountability advances. Mobile societies tend to have weak bonds; the Internet makes it easier to hold people accountable and encourages acerbic negativity. And the absence of trust can feed on itself. Leaders function under stifling oversight; this causes them to perform sluggishly, so trust continues to stagnate. But occasionally there is a chance to escape this trap: A shock causes trust to rise, leaders have a chance to lead and there's an opportunity to boost trust still further.
We've recently had a double opportunity. The boom of the 1990s boosted trust in business; the 2001 terrorist attacks boosted trust in government. But CEOs and politicians abused these gifts with scandals and incompetence. Such is the cost of corporate malfeasance and the Iraq war: Precious social capital is destroyed by leaders' avarice and hubris.
Mallaby's arguing that society functions much better when the ruling class is unfettered by the pesky masses. Yes, yes, the ruling class shouldn't abuse its trust - that would be wrong - but when it does the real tragedy is that then they get subjected to pesky oversight from the dirty fucking hippies which prevents them from achieving their true awesomeness as our unaccountable overlords.
I really don't understand these people.