> until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society.

I don't think it's predicated on that. It's based on low trust of authority. Not necessarily even current authority. And low trust of authority is not equivalent to high trust in... honestly anything else.

  > You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened

These are regions known for high levels of authoritarianism, not democracy, not anarchy (I'm not advocating for anarchy btw). These regions often have both high levels of authoritarianism AND low levels of trust. Though places like China, Japan, Korea etc have high authoritarianism and high trust (China obviously much more than the other two).

  > but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?

It's a good question and you're right that the results aren't great. But I don't think it's as bad as the failure modes of high authoritarian countries.

High authority + low trust + abuse gives you situations like we've seen in Russia, Iran, North Korea. These are pretty bad. The people have no faith in their governments and the governments are centered around enriching a few.

High authority + high trust + abuse is probably even worse though. That's how you get countries like Nazi German (and cults). The government is still centered around enriching a few but they create more stability by narrowing the targeting. Or rather by having a clearer scale where everyone isn't abused ad equally. (You could see the famous quotes by a famous US president about keeping the white population in check by making them believe that at least they're not black)

None of the outcomes are good but I think the authoritarian ones are much worse.

  > when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

But this is also different from what I'm talking about. You can have my framework and trust your government. If you carefully read you'll find that they are not mutually exclusive.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? That implies that the road to hell isn't paved just by evil people. It can be paved even by good well intentioned ones. Just like I suggested about when programming. We don't intend to create bugs or flaws (at least most of us don't), but they still exist. They still get created even when we're trying our hardest to not create them, right? But being aware that they happen unintentionally helps you make fewer of them, right? I'm suggesting something similar, but about governments.