In sum, it makes far readier sense to distrust government than to trust it. The kinds of understanding necessary for trusting government are almost logically ruled out for typical citizens, while the kinds necessary for distrusting it are commonplace and resonant with ordinary life experience.

QUESTION: This flips conventional civic framing that sees trust in institutions as default virtue. Worth exploring the empirical basis for why trust-making knowledge is so constrained.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 761