Trust erodes in slow form before it erodes in fast form

Institutional trust tends to erode along two timescales. The visible timescale is event-driven: a breach, a misstep, a public failure. The slower timescale is compositional: a steady accumulation of small inconsistencies between what an institution says and what it routinely does.

The second timescale is the more important one, and the harder to observe from the inside. It does not produce moments. It produces a background condition.

By the time a trust event becomes legible, the slow erosion has usually been running for years. The event is the punctuation, not the sentence.