Trust doesn't work

Iain Dale is pointing to a report in the times, which he doesn't link to (thanks Iain) about a speech by Mark Thompson on the general levels of distrust people have for politicians and how the BBC can educate them out of these naughty thoughts. The speech itself is rather less than the report makes out, and I'm not particularly interested in his claim that the BBC can to ride to the rescue and overturn decades of distrust in the political classes through re-education. It can't though if that includes being a little less biased (or at least open that they are biased) then that would be good thing. I want to query why the general distrust of our political elite is seen as a bad thing.

Seeing those in public office are seen as primarily motivated by their own interests provides an extremely good model for predicting their behaviour. This model is so good that there is an entire branch of economics has been built from it which has produced several nobel prizes.

The lack of trust in politicians isn't due to them not understanding them, it is that they understand them only too well. This is people looking at the various bits data they have and coming up, in aggregate, with a conclusion that is just as good as that of the very best economists. It is the result of The Wisdom of Crowds.

Mark Thompson says that:

people get on with their lives and the UK remains a going concern despite the very high levels of stated scepticism.

so people must actually trust the politicians and not want to admit it, because without them putting their faith in the wise man in whitehall everything would fall apart.

However scepticism is the better model than trust so it would be more accurately put the UK remains a going concern because of the very high levels of scepticism. People understand not to trust politicians when they claim that they are going to make black white or cause money to fall from the sky. They know how little the man in whitehall can really achieve and plan accordingly. Mark Thompson claims that scepticism is a distroted view of reality, but it isn't. Scepticism provides the more accurate way of assessing the actions of those in public office, it is being trusting that is the distorted view which produces strange results.