Is trust our most valuable asset?

Those who steal our trust are exceptional villains. Look at what happens to us, after we’ve suffered such loss. We must bear the expenses of bigger, stronger locks, live under surveillance cameras and submit to scrutiny like prison inmates at airports and borders.
We add layers and layers of security personnel, watchers watching the watchers, until the cost of doing anything becomes staggering. Budgets once sufficient to achieve results must balloon, to pay for more police, more guards, more lawyers. Auditors must count these costs, to catch cheaters and the auditors themselves must be investigated when fraud is suspected.
How expensive all this is! Resources we need to do productive things are syphoned off to pay for protections we didn’t need when we had trust.
Perhaps our ability to trust has become too weak, for lack of exercise. Perhaps, too, society’s severest penalties should apply to those who breach public trust. It is a very costly crime.