Parsimonic Trust

When p2p encryption became fashionable, a paradigm of economics emerged which was based on total and complete anonymity. It was suddenly possible to conduct a transaction with a person whose identity could never be certain, with a low probability of default on obligations. Such a system only leads to adverse and non-self-inflicted consequences in the presence of power structures based on a different (more antiquated and enlightenment-based) sentiment, accompanied with the assumption of incompatibility between those sentiments. The idea is to consider every possible way of exploiting your game-theoretic advantage in a situation, assume your counterpart has the same capabilities, and thus ensure trust by planning against yourself. Your own mind is the limit. If you don't understand the capabilities of your opponent, or what you are doing, you have to assume that the probability of being shafted is close to unity. 

So, do we know what the capabilities of the state are? They are in theory knowable, at least where I live, because these capabilities are constituted. But since it would require a lifetime of studying, no one individual within the domain of where the state has a monopoly on legal violence, can possibly know them all. Thus the state mechanism for keeping us secure violates Kerckhoff's principle. We wouldn't need lying politicians if every human had the faculty for understanding large collective activity in an intuitive manner, or if organized human life were significantly less complicated, since it would simply be obvious what social contract should be entered into. Why have faith in a manifestly secretive entity like God (if you believe it exists) or the intelligence community, or your landlord playing their cards close to the chest on whether a multi-week roof renovation is strictly necessary?

You don't make yourself popular if you assume nobody can be trusted. People worry about you, they begin to pathologize it. Despite this, the solipsism of trustworthiness is a historically successful paradigm. You don't make mistakes brought on by the sloppiness of others if you adopt it. It is possible to live under the assumption of minimized trust - in fact, it's necessary, more so today than ever. There is no good faith. There is only stupid, uncritical faith. Show me proof that humans are anything more than animals on some arbitrary spectrum of sapience ranging from the most rudimentary Archaean to a hypothetical deity. Show me proof that this spectrum is even closed and bounded, if it exists. And until the day you do, I will trust nothing I can't believe to anticipate the structure of.