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TheOtherDave comments on EY "Politics is the Mind Killer" sighting at Washington Examiner and Reason.com - Less Wrong
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Well, I agree as far as that goes, but if you also mean to suggest that a group run by informal oligarchy can't (or isn't likely to) persist in that structure in the face of value conflicts due to that erosion of loyalty, I disagree. IME small groups typically have all manner of internal conflicts, which admittedly serve to weaken the group's internal cohesion, but typically not enough so to cause the group to disintegrate altogether. (Indeed, the same is true of large groups with more formal structures.)
Does this really matter? Ultimately, yes, a small group may simply trust an oligarchy to take right decisions for them, and do what the oligarchy says. But even then, I'm not sure that this qualifies as a "decision procedure" (of either the formal or informal kind) in any politically interesting sense.
If I'm a member of a small group who thinks we should do X, and you're a member of the same group who thinks we should do Y, and the group does Y because you have more power in that group than I do (whether that power is due to greater trust or some other factor; trust is far from being the only mechanism through which informal power gets exerted in small groups), then it matters to me.
And if individuals exerting power over groups (whether through trust or other mechanisms) to cause the groups to implement the individual's preferences isn't politics, then I don't know what politics is, and I'm not sure why politics is more important than whatever-that-is.