Michael S. Malone looks at trust and betrayal, initially in the context of the failure of his Comcast service, but this causes him to reflect on why people distrust the government to manage life and and death issues:

...nowhere is the burden of trust greater than when we enter into a relationship that requires us to abandon all alternatives. Because Trust can never be perfect, it always helps to know that if that Trust begins to falter we have someplace else to go, an escape hatch.

This human need, I suspect, is what underlies the angry response right now to the Obama Administration's health care plan. Progressives and other social engineers always make the same mistake: they find what they believe is the One Best Way, the empirically most efficient, reasonable and fair process, and then seek to impose it on the entire population as the Right Thing To Do. What they inevitably fail to appreciate (because they are Utopians) is that they are demanding from the populace almost infinite Trust in matters of life and death -- something most sensible adults will, wisely, never give -- while at the same time stripping away every other alternative. This is guaranteed to create fear, a sense of helplessness . . . and ultimately, anger.

But still, much as we might curse and swear at Amtrak, Verizon, Comcast, or SEPTA, the fact remains that reliable cable or phone or train services are generally not life and death matters. Life and death are. The idea of losing personal autonomy in these personal matters, instead having to trust in the government while losing the ability to choose between various private sectors, is one of the most horrifying fates imaginable.

Little wonder that the government health care debate has triggered such a visceral reaction.

Bad as Comcast is, the government is worse. Anyone who has ever had to queue up to get a drivers license or register a car knows this firsthand. The fact that you are trapped and have nowhere else to go, that you must do whatever these unaccountable bureaucrats demand and there are no alternatives, that's creepy enough when all that's at stake is your ability to drive. But when it's your body being cut open? The end of your life?

There are some places where government should not be.

And yes, I realize that for many people, the government is already there in the form of Medicare. It's in huge trouble, and it is headed for bankruptcy. Except the government can't go bankrupt, so we'll all have to pay. I think Medicare was a huge mistake, but instead of learning a lesson from it, the dreary, controlling people behind it -- I call them "They" and Malone calls them "progressives and other social engineers" -- they want to use Medicare as a model and expand the pool until it includes everyone, and finally at that point there will be no practical way out. No competing private insurance companies, no right to go to better hospital, no right to find the best doctor you can afford, and pay him extra.

There will be nowhere to go, and ultimately no way to leave, and I am reminded of this observation about how freedom is lost:

People will not know they are encircled until it is too late - like putting in all these very deep, robust fence-posts with no fence panels. All seems open. One day you will wake up and the panels are in, you are trapped and they can decide what law they wish to impose...

Trust the progressives and social engineers in matters of life and death?

I'd like to say "they've got to be kidding."

Except I know they're not.