Politics & Power Quote by Scott Cook

Cook’s line lands like a spreadsheet with a pulse: trust is down, risk is up, and the burden has quietly migrated onto the individual. Coming from a Silicon Valley businessman (and the co-founder of Intuit, a company that literally monetizes people’s anxiety about money and taxes), “self-reliant” isn’t just a moral posture. It’s a market description. If institutions won’t guarantee retirement security, consumers will need tools, apps, and advisory services to patch the gap. The sentence flatters the listener with autonomy while normalizing a structural retreat.

The subtext is a late-20th/early-21st century shift from collective promises to personal portfolios. Company pensions withered, 401(k)s and IRAs rose, and the idea of retirement became less a guaranteed runway and more a DIY project with penalties for getting it wrong. Cook frames the problem as a credibility crisis (“people don’t place their trust…”) rather than a policy choice or corporate strategy. That framing matters: it turns a political question (what do we owe workers and retirees?) into a behavioral one (how do you manage your own risk?).

There’s also a subtle absolution baked in. If the cultural lesson is self-reliance, then institutions aren’t failing you; they’re simply no longer in the business of certainty. The quote works because it mirrors how insecurity is sold as empowerment: you’re not abandoned, you’re “independent.” In an era of volatile markets and eroding safety nets, that’s both a rallying cry and a warning label.