Part of the joy of working in digital policy in the UK is that many of your days start like this:
I, a Tory politician, have a brilliant plan / erudite commentary / a policy announcement on tech policy strategy. Click here to read it in this EXCLUSIVE Elite Broadsheet Newspaper piece.
We all know full well that this is how the game of politics works. These brilliant plans, erudite commentaries, and policy announcements aren’t made for you plebs. They’re made for the machine to feed the beast inside it.
The bipartisan deal contains a pot of money to repair America’s roads and bridges, and build a few more besides. This is the way we usually do infrastructure in America. First we build a ton of roads and bridges that are highly expensive to maintain, especially with our ruinously high construction costs (see this recent article by Jerusalem Demsas). Then, because costs are so high, we wait for a long time to repair the roads and bridges, until civil engineers start screeching, roads get potholed, and there’s a bridge collapse or two. Then we muster up the political will to throw the requisite shit-ton of money at the problem, the potholes and weak bridges get repaired for twice the amount it would have cost had we done it on a regular schedule and three times the amount it would cost if we were a normal rich country. And the whole cycle begins again.
In this sense, trust is a polarizing strategy, and it's one that is important to apply early on in the relationship before someone becomes important to you. If you trust someone excessively and it goes badly, but they don't matter to you, you can just kick them to the curb. In general, trusting someone at a level that seems slightly excessive for their level of importance to you will help you sort people in your life who you want to be more important to you than they are from those who you want to be less important than they are.
And it does need to be excessive. It needs to be trust beyond reason. Not beyond all reason, but somewhat beyond what currently seems reasonable. If it is not, then unless they are prepared to take the first move, you will never find the signs you need to move to a higher level of mutual trust.
Sometimes this will go badly, but you need to be able to try bad things.