What Now?

We've Been Building Billion-Dollar Systems That Make the Problem Worse

An outline for your next post

Opening Hook

Subtitle: How mistrust-by-design creates the crises it claims to solve

Start with a specific, visceral example of a system failing expensively:

TSA security theater: $8+ billion annually, negligible security improvement, massive inconvenience
The 95% failure rate in their own tests
Meanwhile, the actual solution (reinforced cockpit doors) cost a fraction and actually worked
This isn't incompetence—it's what happens when you design from mistrust

The pattern: We keep building expensive control systems that:

Don't solve the original problem
Create new problems
Demand even more expensive "solutions"
Leave everyone worse off

This is the doom loop of mistrust-by-design.

Part 1: The Vicious Cycle

How mistrust creates the problems it tries to prevent

Education's Spiral

Started with: concern that some students weren't learning
Response: standardized testing, accountability metrics, teach-to-test curricula
Cost: billions in testing infrastructure, lost classroom time, narrowed curriculum
Result: students hate learning more, teachers quit in record numbers, creativity plummets
Next response: more testing, more accountability, more controls
The actual problem (engagement, meaning, agency) gets worse with each "solution"

The Surveillance Workplace

Started with: worry about productivity and time theft
Response: monitoring software, keystroke logging, activity tracking, bathroom break metrics
Cost: billions in surveillance tech, massive management overhead, legal risks
Result: employee engagement hits all-time lows, quiet quitting, actual productivity drops
Next response: AI surveillance, predictive analytics, even tighter controls
The actual problem (trust, autonomy, meaning) deteriorates further

Healthcare's Permission Labyrinth

Started with: legitimate safety concerns and liability fears
Response: prior authorizations, step therapy, formulary restrictions, documentation requirements
Cost: physicians spend 2+ hours on paperwork per hour of patient care, billions in administrative overhead
Result: doctors burned out, patients getting sicker waiting for approvals, crucial time lost
Next response: more gatekeeping, more documentation, more controls
The actual problem (patient care) becomes almost incidental

The pattern across all three:

Control costs more than trust
Control doesn't solve the underlying problem
Control often makes the underlying problem worse
So we add more control

Part 2: The Hidden Costs Nobody Counts

What we lose when we design from mistrust

The Innovation Tax

Every permission requirement is an innovation killed
Case study: Compare pharmaceutical innovation (heavily regulated, slow, expensive) to software innovation (relatively open, fast, cheap)
Not arguing against all pharma regulation, but noting the cost
How many cures don't exist because the system assumes bad actors?
The genius trapped behind "not your job" boundaries

The Circumvention Economy

People spend enormous energy gaming control systems
Students learning to cheat rather than learning the material
Employees appearing busy rather than being productive
Patients learning to "speak insurance" rather than describing symptoms
Massive waste of human creativity applied to defeating systems instead of improving them

The Disconnection Cost

When systems treat people as potential criminals, people disconnect
"Learned helplessness" becomes rational response to learned powerlessness
The civic engagement we desperately need dies under surveillance
Case study: Compare Wikipedia editor engagement vs. traditional encyclopedia contributors
Trust creates belonging; mistrust creates alienation

The Brittle System Problem

Heavily controlled systems can't adapt
They break catastrophically instead of bending
Case study: Blockbuster's inability to adapt vs. Netflix's emergence
Case study: Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia's resilience
Centralized control = single points of failure
Distributed trust = antifragile systems

Part 3: Why We Keep Doing This

The forces that perpetuate mistrust-by-design

The Liability Trap

One lawsuit creates policy for thousands
We design for the worst case, punishing everyone for one person's action
The legal system rewards defensive design over effective design
Insurance requirements that mandate mistrust

The Professionalization Racket

Expert gatekeeping protects incumbents
Credentials as barrier to entry, not guarantee of quality
Case study: How many great teachers can't teach because they lack the "right" degree?
Case study: Occupational licensing that protects profits, not public

The Quantification Delusion

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" leads to measuring the wrong things
What's easily measured (test scores, keystrokes, time-on-task) isn't what matters
What matters (learning, innovation, care) becomes secondary
Goodhart's Law on steroids: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

The Security Theater Business Model

Entire industries profit from fear and mistrust
Surveillance capitalism needs us to mistrust each other
The consulting complex that sells "solutions" to trust problems
Political incentives that reward being "tough" on X

The Ratchet Effect

Controls almost never get removed
Each crisis adds a layer
We rarely ask: "Did that control actually work?"
We just add more when problems persist
Organizations develop scar tissue that never heals

Part 4: What the Billion Dollars Could Buy Instead

The opportunity cost of mistrust

Real Examples of Trust-Based Alternatives

Morning Star (self-management)

No managers, no job titles, workers negotiate commitments
Tomato processing company, not a tech startup
More profitable than competitors, lower turnover
What they DON'T spend money on: management hierarchy, HR bureaucracy, performance reviews
What they DO spend money on: training, equipment, employee development

Buurtzorg (neighborhood nursing)

Netherlands nursing organization, eliminated management layers
Teams of 10-12 nurses self-organize patient care
50% less administrative overhead than traditional nursing
Better patient outcomes, higher nurse satisfaction, lower costs
What they saved: billions in management costs
What they gained: better care, happier nurses

Semco (radical workplace democracy)

Employees set own salaries, choose managers, define work hours
Revenue grew from $4M to $212M with this model
Skeptics said it would fail immediately
It's been running for 40+ years
What they saved: oversight bureaucracy, turnover costs, engagement consultants
What they gained: innovation, loyalty, profitability

The Math Nobody Does

If we took just the surveillance and control budgets from:

Educational testing and accountability systems
Workplace monitoring and management
Healthcare prior authorization and documentation
TSA and security theater
Professional licensing boards
And redirected it to trust-based alternatives...

What could we build?

Teacher-directed schools with real resources
Worker-owned cooperatives
Community health clinics with actual care time
Transportation systems designed for flow, not control
Apprenticeship programs instead of credential barriers

The tragic part: We already know these work. We have the examples. We're just afraid to try them at scale.

Part 5: The Breaking Point

Why this matters more now than ever

The Legitimacy Crisis

Institutions losing trust precisely because their design breaks trust
Can't rebuild trust with PR campaigns
Have to actually redesign systems
Current trajectory: more control → less trust → demands for change → more control
This ends badly

The AI Amplification Risk

Every control system we've built becomes supercharged with AI
Surveillance becomes perfect, inescapable
But the underlying problem (mistrust) gets exponentially worse
We're automating dystopia unless we change direction
Alternative: AI could enable trust-based systems to scale

The Generational Divide

Younger generations recognize the systems are broken
They're opting out: quiet quitting, FIRE movement, alternative lifestyles
The social contract is already broken
Choice: redesign from trust, or watch systems collapse from distrust

The Geopolitical Dimension

Authoritarian systems are doubling down on control
Democratic systems adding surveillance and restrictions
The irony: we're becoming what we claim to oppose
Competitive advantage goes to societies that unlock human potential
That requires trust-based design

Part 6: The Way Out

How to stop building systems that make things worse

Start With One Question

Before building any new system or fixing an old one, ask: "What are we assuming people will do wrong, and what if we're wrong about that?"

The Audit You Need

Look at your three most expensive control systems:

What problem were they supposed to solve?
Did they solve it?
What new problems did they create?
What would happen if you removed them?
What would you do with the money instead?

The Small Bets Strategy

You don't have to transform everything at once
Find one expensive control system
Run an experiment with trust-based alternative
Measure what actually matters (not what's easy to measure)
Learn, iterate, expand

The Pattern Recognition Skill

Train yourself to see mistrust-by-design
Every security gate, permission slip, surveillance camera
Ask: "Is this solving a real problem or performing security theater?"
Ask: "What would a trust-based alternative look like?"
Collect examples of trust-based systems that work

The Coalition Building

You can't do this alone
Find others who see the pattern
Share stories of successful trust-based alternatives
Build political will for redesign
Make the economic case: trust is cheaper

Closing: The Choice

We're at an inflection point. We can:

Option A: Keep building billion-dollar systems that make problems worse

More surveillance, more control, more alienation
Higher costs, lower trust, worse outcomes
Eventually, system collapse or authoritarianism

Option B: Start designing from trust

Cheaper, more effective, more humane
Unlocks innovation, builds community, creates resilience
Requires courage to flip our assumptions

The evidence is already in. Trust-based systems work. They're more efficient, more adaptive, more humane. We're just too scared to build them at scale.

But the cost of mistrust is becoming unbearable. And the systems we've built are starting to fail catastrophically.

The question isn't whether we CAN design from trust. The question is whether we'll do it before the mistrust-based systems collapse entirely.

Potential Case Studies to Research/Add:

Valve Software (no managers, flat hierarchy) - gaming company
Gore-Tex (lattice organization) - manufacturing
Handelsbanken (no budgets, branch autonomy) - banking
Finnish education system (high trust, low testing, excellent outcomes)
Mondragon (worker cooperative, 80,000+ employees)
Patagonia (trust-based retail, environmental mission)
REI (cooperative model)

New Insights to Develop:

The Control Paradox: The more you tighten control, the more it slips away
The Accountability Illusion: Heavy documentation doesn't create accountability, it creates CYA behavior
The Innovation Ceiling: Control systems cap innovation at "approved" level
The Trust Dividend: Organizations that design from trust get exponential returns
The Surveillance Spiral: Each layer of surveillance demands more surveillance to monitor the monitors

This outline gives you a structure as substantive as the DfT post, with a sharper critical edge. It names the villain (mistrust-by-design), shows the damage (with specific costs and examples), and offers the alternative (trust-based systems with proof they work).

The tone would be more urgent and critical than the DfT post—less "here's an interesting pattern" and more "we're actively breaking everything and here's how to stop."

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