I’ve been away from writing for a while. A move from the US to Indonesia (from New York to Jakarta) has a way of consuming you (visas, shipping containers, figuring out where to buy decent coffee). But I’m back, and fittingly, the thing that’s pulled me back to the keyboard isn’t a stock thesis or an equity story (those are coming, I promise). It’s something I keep bumping into here, in conversations at warungs and in traffic jams and in the news: the quiet, creeping erosion of trust.So bear with me. We’re going to talk about pirates first before getting back to the usual programming!“Our Captain and his Mate used us Barbarously. We poor Men can’t have Justice done us. There is nothing said to our Commanders, let them never so much abuse us, and use us like Dogs” -Pirate William Fly, 1726, after being captured speaking about treatment by merchant ship captains operating under Admiralty Law. William Fly said that in 1726, shortly before he was hanged. He’d turned pirate after years of brutal treatment aboard merchant ships operating under Admiralty Law. He wasn’t just angry; he was making a point about power and fairness that still lands three centuries later.Here’s what most people don’t know about pirates: they were, in many ways, remarkably democratic. The Golden Age of Piracy (roughly 1650 to 1730) produced something genuinely unusual. Crews operated under “Articles of Agreement,” written codes that governed how plunder was split, how disputes were settled, even how injuries were compensated. Bartholomew Roberts’ crew, for instance, specified exactly what the captain got (two shares), what officers received (one and a half), and what ordinary crewmen took home (one share). There was a system. There were rules. Everyone knew where they stood.And yet, distrust still destroyed them. Almost every time.Captain Kidd faced mutiny when his crew suspected he was skimming. Charles Vane was voted out by men who simply stopped believing in his judgment.Benjamin Hornigold lost his captaincy because he refused to attack English ships. a decision his crew read not as principle, but as hidden loyalty. Once suspicion took root, it didn’t matter what the articles said. The crew was already gone.Good investing is mostly just good thinking applied to numbers. That's what I try to do here every week.I’ve been reflecting on this since arriving in Indonesia. Although I grew up here and spent early career years in Jakarta, I sense that something has changed. Distrust has dangerously permeated multiple layers of society. Distrust isn’t a uniquely Indonesian problem, I want to be clear about that. But it’s visible here in ways that are hard to ignore, and it rhymes with what I watched happen in the US before I left. Political polarization is so entrenched that a 2022 Pew survey found 62% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats viewed the other party as an existential threat. And what distrust can cause in the economy? Just look at the chart below.Seeing this chart while other Southeast Asian indices are rising. Pretty depressing, huh?When you can’t agree on what’s true, cooperation becomes nearly impossible. It’s the same dynamic that sank pirate ships: once the rumors start, once everyone’s watching everyone else’s hands, the collective falls apart. The tragedy isn’t that people are malicious. It’s that distrust is self-fulfilling. You stop trusting institutions, so you disengage from them, so they become less representative, so you trust them even less. The spiral just keeps going.The historical irony is that the pirates who succeeded, the ones who built something that lasted longer than a single voyage, were the ones who figured out trust.Bartholomew Roberts became one of the most feared and effective pirates of his era not because he was the most ruthless, but because his crew believed in him. They knew the rules. They knew they’d be treated fairly. That cohesion made them dangerous. Blackbeard, meanwhile, with his terrifying reputation and operatic persona, was ultimately betrayed by his own men, who quietly went to the British and took their pardons. All that theater, and it still couldn’t buy loyalty.Walter Kennedy, another pirate of the era, put it plainly: “Most of them having suffered formerly from the ill-treatment of their officers, provided carefully against any such evil now they had the choice in themselves . . . for the due execution thereof they constituted other officers besides the captain, so very industrious were they to avoid putting too much power into the hands of one man.”-Pirate Walter KennedyI moved to Indonesia partly for the professional opportunity, partly for the adventure, and partly for the family. I’m here also because I wanted to experience something new: different issues, a new political culture, and a different daily rhythm. However, I discovered that the problems aren’t that different; the distrust may follow different fault lines, but its form remains familiar. Ultimately, the value of the reward behind this move exceeds anything found in a Spanish galleon.So, let’s see if I can figure out how to make the best out of this move :)More soon. Back to the US or Southeast Asia equities next time, I promise.Thanks for reading the Excelsior letter! I don't have all the answers. I just ask better questions than I used to. If that sounds like something worth following, subscribe below.