To Those Who Trust the System Without Question
Trust isn’t earned by systems that work most of the time. It’s revealed in failure who carries the risk and who gets protection.
To Those Who Trust the System Without Question,
You logged in this morning without thinking twice. Tapped “Accept” on terms you didn’t read. Clicked “Proceed” on a transaction worth more than your daily wage.
These small gestures feel routine because the system works most of the time.
But reliability isn’t resilience. Don’t mistake one for the other. Systems don’t earn trust by working 99% of the time.
They earn trust in the critical 1% when everything breaks down. And when it does, the consequences aren’t shared equally.
When Trust Becomes Fragile
Systems look robust because they handle predictable loads in normal conditions. Your e-wallet processes payments smoothly. Your trading app executes orders without delay.
Your digital bank transfers funds instantly. All this creates an illusion of dependability that hides fragility.
The system works until it doesn’t. And failure never arrives at a convenient time.
It fails during market crashes when you need liquidity most.
During emergencies when you need access immediately. During upgrades when critical decisions can’t wait.
Trust isn’t built on good weather performance. It’s built on how systems degrade when storms hit. Most optimise for the former and ignore the latter.
The Unequal Distribution of Risk
Blind trust isn’t distributed fairly.
The wealthy absorb shocks with backup accounts, legal teams, and alternative channels. They treat failure as an inconvenience.
For Malaysia’s B40 households, failure means missed work, stranded commutes, and cascading financial stress.
When servers crash, when funds freeze, when systems falter, consequences land hardest on those with the fewest safety nets.
Digital literacy deepens the divide. Tech-savvy users diversify platforms, maintain backups, and spot red flags.
Vulnerable users, those who trust systems most completely, bear the greatest risk.
The system demands equal trust but delivers protection that scales with wealth and sophistication. That’s not accidental. It’s design.
Why Systems Fail Users
Modern platforms prize speed over resilience. Built for markets, regulators, and quarterly reports, not for users in moments of failure.
Robustness testing checks technical loads, not human impact. Recovery prioritises uptime, not user well-being. Risk frameworks protect platforms, not people.
Why? Because policy moves faster than principles, and systems inherit that imbalance. Compliance becomes checklist theatre. Resilience becomes an afterthought.
The result: systems that shine in calm waters but abandon users in storms.
Rethinking How You Give Trust
Your trust has value. Stop giving it away for free.
Every time you onboard, store value, or automate decisions, you’re making a risk calculation, whether you realise it or not. Start asking:
- Who absorbs risk when this fails?
- What happens during outages?
- How are disputes handled when automation errors?
- Can I recover on my own, or am I captive to goodwill?
Demand transparency about failure, not just success. Insist on escalation paths and human oversight. Ask for principles, not just compliance.
Look at our region: when e-wallets crashed, who got support first? When crypto exchanges froze withdrawals, who recovered funds? When trading apps failed, whose orders were protected?
The patterns reveal the system’s real priorities.
A Different Approach
I’m not advocating paranoia. I’m advocating agency.
Recognise systems are human creations with incentives misaligned from yours. Understand that “too big to fail” often means “too big to care about you.”
Build redundancy. Diversify platforms. Keep offline alternatives. Learn the mechanics behind the interfaces you rely on.
Most of all, remember: your trust is a resource. Platforms monetise it.
Regulators depend on it. Markets are built on it. You have every right to make it conditional and revocable.
The system wants your trust. I want you to keep your agency.
Systems should earn trust not through consistency in good times, but resilience in crisis. Users should keep enough independence to walk away when systems fail them.
This isn’t cynicism; it’s survival. And survival demands systems that earn, not assume, your trust.
This space stays independent. If it sparked value, you can fuel the next one ⇢
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