One of the primary faults in the way our societies function is that the systems in place have all been designed to operate under the assumption that the essential cogs behave both morally and ethically. This is true for both the micro and macro levels, and is a consequence of the general illusion—or self-deluded wishful thinking—that we all live in a relatively ‘high trust’ society.
Take America. Everywhere you look around you, systems are designed to work under the assumption that they will not be misused by members of the privileged classes. Sure, there’s a smattering of symbolic ‘fail safes’, designed more as token deterrences than any real mechanisms for accountability. The micro level fares better, because the average citizen is far more attuned to the natural savage state of Man. The higher up the food chain you go, to the corporo-governmental level, you find the pressure valves appear deliberately set to “loose”; it’s like a corrupt jail warden leaving the backdoor ostensibly ‘closed’, but unlocked, to allow illicit activity to slip past in the murk of night.
Someone famously said:
“If you want to understand how the world works, imagine that every action is the result of a conspiracy by your enemies.”
