Thomas Shey
Legend
Sure, but I don't think anyone is talking about unlimited trust, and no one engaged this discussion in good faith interprets trust in this context to mean, "I trust this person to always make the best possible decision, no matter how high the stakes, how high the pressure, how quickly a decision needs to be made, how strong their conflict of interest, how complex the situation, etc..." We're playing a game here, not conducting triage in an emergency ward during a natural disaster.
The problem is, to get a good experience on any consistent basis, I assume I (and other people with me) need to regularly check their work. Anything that interferes with that tends to make for a worse game.
In the context of a TTRPG, I would say that trusting the GM would generally mean that you believe they're capable of using the power they have to make fair, consistent and reasonable decisions in line with established expectations, that will result in a generally fun experience, and they're open to constructive feedback and discussion, with the understanding that everyone is there to have fun. Basically, they're a reasonable person, just like everyone else at the table. In such a circumstance, there should be no requirement for rules that prevent an abuse of trust.
But as I said, I don't think that assumption changes my position above. GMing, especially with a system with any detail or where you need to make a lot of judgment calls, is difficult. Its easy to mess up, and mess up in ways that makes a worse experience, sometimes one bad enough to seriously harm it. It just is.
It's clear that some people want rules designed to prevent GMs (or players, for that matter) from acting unreasonably, when I would simply not play with unreasonable people.
I want rules that are clear and have broad applicability; in a secondary case I want games to teach people not to make bad assumptions (and I think the history of this hobby has frequently failed at this) in how to manage games. Sometimes both of these constrain people at one part of the table or another, and I consider that a perfectly acceptable price to pay for that (and I also don't consider speed-of-play such a priority that throwing these under the bus for speed is acceptable).