Tag Archives: Trust

a simple proposal to restore confidence in public data, by el gato malo

Posted on February 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

Nobody is going to trust anybody who says: trust us, but we won’t show you the data on which we base our decisions and edicts. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

if you want trust, let us verify

we inhabit an astonishing time when ever more of our lives and livelihoods are affected by increasingly opaque and unaccountable agencies and systems of technocracy.

they collect the data upon which we rely to render opinions.

they analyze that data to tell us what it means.

and decisions of expansive reach and great moment are made based upon it.

and yet it’s nearly all a black box.

we only see what they want us to see and time after time, they get caught fiddling the figures, making stuff up, using bad math and worse analyses, and cancelling or adulterating every data series that goes against their chosen narratives and pathways.

then they wonder why we won’t trust them.

they empanel blue ribbon committees on “misinformation” as though the problem is just that they are not appealing to enough authority, stifling enough speech, and censoring enough people.

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these “misinformation” summits are the death rattles of an embattled clerisy desperate to reclaim its shattered credibility.

but it does not work like that.

doubling and tripling down on the selfsame shenanigans that got us here is not going to work.

everyone has seen this movie before.

they know the ending.

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Posted in Governments, Horseshit, Media, Medicine, Morality, Politics, Propaganda, Science

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10 Promising Signs That The Insidious Mind-Control-Matrix The Elite Have Created Is Starting To Crumble, by Michael Snyder

Posted on August 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Perhaps its not as easy to fool all the people all the time as they thought. From Michael Snyder at zerohedge.com:

Are we witnessing the start of some sort of a mass awakening in the western world?  For years, I have been writing about the extremely complex systems that are designed to shape and control what we think.  Today, the vast majority of the “news” and “entertainment” that most of us consume is controlled by just a very small handful of immensely powerful corporations.  And of course those corporations are ultimately owned and controlled by the elite of the world.  To a very large degree, the elite have been able to determine what we focus on, what we think about current events, and how we feel about the world around us.  For such a long time, most of the population would take whatever narratives that were pushed upon them by their corporate overlords as the gospel truth, and that always greatly frustrated me.  Fortunately, there are indications that times are changing.

In order for any society to function effectively, there must be a high level of trust.

Unfortunately for the elite, we simply do not trust them anymore.

Trust in our politicians has fallen to an all-time low.

Trust in the media has fallen to an all-time low.

Trust in our corporations has fallen to an all-time low.

Trust in our health care system has fallen to an all-time low.

Trust in our education system has fallen to an all-time low.

Trust in the tech industry has fallen to an all-time low.

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Politicians of the World Unite! By Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on March 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

Trusting politicians should be a “show me” proposition, never automatic. Given their general disrepute, they should have to work three or four times as hard as anybody else to gain trust. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at browstone.org:

Vladimir Putin has given an address to the Russian nation that urged his country to be patient with the current pain. He said he is working to restructure economic life to deal with the ongoing disaster in employment, goods access, productivity, technology, and inflation. It’s transitory, he explained, a result of the war sanctions, and all the fault of the West.

He has this totally under control, he says. Just trust the government.

Many people do. People in cities are skeptical but he remains widely popular in rural areas. Meanwhile the government works to silence dissent, punish those who protest, and control the media.

This story sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it?

Biden’s White House daily urges this country to be patient with the current pain. They are working on ways to address the ongoing mess with inflation, declining financials, goods shortages, supply-chain woes, mail that barely functions, and a medical system that is throttled, distorted, and wildly expensive. It’s all the fault of Putin for invading Ukraine, thus necessitating severe economic sanctions and driving up the cost of everything.

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Posted in Collapse, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, Propaganda, War

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Say goodbye to persuasion: Vaccine mandates may be coming — but will they be legal? by Jonathan Turley

Posted on August 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

It’s demonic to force people to accept an injection of a vaccine they don’t want injected. If people aren’t free to choose what goes into their bodies, freedom is gone completely. From Jonathan Turley at thehill.com:

Say goodbye to persuasion: Vaccine mandates may be coming — but will they be legal?
© UPI Photo

“They didn’t get vaccinated.” Those words from President Biden summed up why his administration made a critical shift in its COVID policies, from mask recommendations to mandatory shots for federal workers. And that represents a third stage of government policy, toward a more confrontational approach to “them” — the increasingly demonized unvaccinated class that is roughly half of America.

But this stage could face legal challenges in coming weeks, as citizens and some states push back on mandates.

This month was a clear break from persuasion and a step toward coercion in dealing with those who refuse to be vaccinated. Even the normally staid Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is ramping up its rhetoric, declaring that the “war has changed” due to the Delta variant. For some, however, there is concern that Biden’s “they” is a declaration of war on them.

Clearly, there is a rapidly diminishing level of communication between the “vacs” and “non-vacs.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Law, Medicine, Politics

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COVID-19 Has Forever Destroyed Americans’ Trust In Ruling Class ‘Experts’, by Josh Hammer

Posted on June 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

The author gives many Americans way too much credit, but it’s a nice thought. From Josh Hammer at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the “rulemaking” governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.

Put more simply, the most straightforward version of the argument offered by partisans of the administrative state amounts to, “Trust the experts.” And over the century-plus since Wilson’s presidency, the “trust the experts” leitmotif has moved well beyond the realm of prevailing dogma for mandarins in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather, for large swaths of the citizenry and the elected official class, “trust the experts” now reigns supreme for everything from the military (“Trust the generals!”) to public health (“Trust the epidemiologists!”).

And therein lies the rub.

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Posted in Government, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda

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America’s Trust in the Mainstream Media Hits an ALL-TIME LOW and “Journalists” Are Shocked, by Robert Wheeler

Posted on February 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Lately, mainstream media figures have been asking how they can regain the public’s trust. The answer is simple: tell the truth. From Robert Wheeler at theorganicprepper.com:

Given the 24/7 hysterical propaganda coming from mainstream media, it is easy to see how Americans are clueless about current events’ true nature, whether it be politics, COVID, or foreign policy.

But, there is some good news.

For the first time, most Americans do not trust the mainstream media

According to PR firm Edelman’s Annual Trust-Barometer, fewer than half of all Americans trust the mainstream media despite the constant propaganda onslaught. 

Anyone in journalism or media could have told you long ago this would be the case. The dinosaur knowns as Mainstream Media is dying. Before Google conspired with Zuckerberg and other digital giants to crush alternative media, those alternative outlets competed with and beat MSM.

MSM and Big Tech attempted to put a stop to that revolution, but the damage was done. Alternative media gave a large portion of the American people a glimpse of real journalism, and, ever since, MSM has been slowly withering.

Edelman’s “Trust Barometer” shows that Americans’ trust in the media establishment has now hit an all-time low in 2021, falling three more points to 46 percent. For the first time, that figure has dropped below the 50 percent mark.

Social media is taking blows to the chin, with Americans’ trust ranked at only 27% for content found on Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

The lack of faith in the mainstream is not exclusive to America. Across the world, belief in social media is only 35 percent. Globally, only 35 percent of people rank social media as trustworthy for “general news and information.”

Other related information shows that Americans are not happy with journalists or the journalistic profession either. Fifty-six percent of Americans said journalists are “purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”  Fifty-eight percent agreed that most media outlets were “more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than informing the public.” This website published an article about how the MSM was goading the public back in 2018.

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Three Major Imbalances – Financial, Trust and Geopolitical, by Michael Krieger

Posted on December 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Many things are out of whack and it’s only a matter of time before everything falls apart. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom’s a joke
We’re just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you’re still free start running away
Cause we’re coming for you!

– Conor Oberst, “Land Locked Blues”

It’s hard to believe 2020 is just around the corner. If the last ten years have taught us anything, it’s the extent to which a vicious and corrupt oligarchy will go to further extend and entrench their economic and societal interests. Although the myriad desperate actions undertaken by the ruling class this past decade have managed to sustain the current paradigm a bit longer, it has not come without cost and major long-term consequence. Gigantic imbalances across multiple areas have been created and worsened, and the resolution of these in the years ahead (2020-2025) will shape the future for decades to come. I want to discuss three of them today, the financial system imbalance, the trust imbalance and the geopolitical imbalance.

Recent posts have focused on how what really matters in a crisis is not the event itself, but the response to it. The financial crisis of ten years ago is particularly instructive, as the entire institutional response to a widespread financial industry crime spree was to focus on saving a failed system and then pretending nothing happened. The public was given no time or space to debate whether the system needed saving; or more specifically, which parts needed saving, which parts needed wholesale restructuring and which parts should’ve been thrown into the dustbin. Rather, unelected central bankers stepped in with trillions in order to prop up, empower and reward the very industry and individuals that created the crisis to begin with. There was no real public debate, central bankers just did whatever they wanted. It was a moment so brazen and disturbing it shook many of us, including myself, out of a lifetime of propaganda induced deception.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Cronyism, Debt, Economy, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Intelligence, Investigations, Law, Military, Morality, Politics, War

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What’s Been Normalized? Nothing Good or Positive, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on November 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

Many things that were considered abhorrent within the past few decades are now considered normal. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

What’s been normalized are policies and cultural norms that seek to enrich and protect the few at the expense of the many.

When the initially extraordinary fades into the unremarkable background of everyday life, we say it’s been normalized. Put another way, we quickly habituateto new conditions, and rationalize our ready acceptance of what was previously unacceptable.

Technology offers many examples of extraordinary advances quickly becoming normalized as we habituate to new devices and behaviors, but my focus today is on policies and cultural norms that were radical departures from accepted norms at their introduction but which are now accepted as “normal.”

This normalization of extreme policies conceals the often equally extreme unintended consequences of the new policies and norms.

Let’s start with two examples which have unleashed unintended consequences that have completely distorted markets: allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to “consumers” and allowing corporations to buy back their own shares. Each of these activities had been banned for self-evident reasons, yet were allowed in the neoliberal rush to deregulate industries without regard for the long-term consequences.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Crime, Cronyism, Debt, Economics, Financial markets, Government, Media

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Reimagining Trusted Intermediaries, by Electric Capital

Posted on October 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

A growing number of people have trust issues with a growing number of institutions, including financial intermediaries. That is why cryptocurrencies are here to stay, and their roles will undoubtedly evolve and expand. From Electric Capital at medium.com:

A form of disruptive innovation occurs when a cultural shift is combined with utilitarian technology that allows the culture shift to scale. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have both of these properties. They are a cultural shift manifesting through useful technology:

  1. We are in the midst of a global collapse of trust in institutions.
  2. Technologies (blockchain, digitally scarce coins, distributed consensus, etc.) allow us to operate without these trusted intermediaries are now emerging, and allow us to reimagine a world without these intermediaries.

In the midst of crypto-mania, we believe it important to focus on the utility behind the hype: Blockchain is software that allows us to reimagine trusted intermediaries. Cryptocurrencies are one of the first killer applications. Cryptocurrencies are reimagining the world’s most successful means to transmit trust: money.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Governments, Money, Society

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Here’s What We’ve Lost in the Past Decade, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on July 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

There’s no arguing with Charles Hugh Smith on his list; life in the US has gotten much uglier the last ten years. From Smith at oftwominds.com:

The confidence and hubris of those directing the rest of us to race off the cliff while they watch from a safe distance is off the charts.
The past decade of “recovery” and “growth” has actually been a decade of catastrophic losses for our society and nation. Here’s a short list of what we’ve lost:
1. Functioning markets. Free markets discover price and assess risk. What passes for markets now are little more than signaling devices to convince us the economy is doing spectacularly well. It is doing spectacularly well, but only for the top .1% of 1% and the class of managerial/technocrat flunkies and apologists who serve the interests of the top .1%.
2. Genuine Virtue. Parading around a slogan or online accusation, “liking” others in whatever echo-chamber tribe the virtue-signaler is seeking validation in, and other cost-free gestures–now signals virtue. Genuine virtue–sacrificing the support of one’s tribe for principles that require skin in the game–has disappeared from the public sphere and the culture.
3. Civility. As Scientific American reported in its February issue (The Tribalism of Truth), the incentive structure of largely digital “tribes” rewards the most virulent, the most outrageous, the least reasonable and the most vindictive of the tribe with “likes” while offering little to no encouragement of restraint, caution, learning rather than shouting, etc.
The cost of gaining tribal encouragement is essentially zero, while the risk of ostracism from the tribe is high. In a society with so few positive social structures, the self-referentially toxic digital tribe may be the primary social structure for atomized “consumers” in a dysfunctional system dominated by a rigged “market” and a central state that no longer needs the consent of the governed.
Common ground, civility, the willingness to listen and learn–all lost.
4. Trust. Few find reason to trust corporations, the corporate media, the tech monopolies or the government. This distrust is reasonable, given these institutions have squandered the public trust to protect the swag being skimmed by insiders and elites.
Rather than earn our trust with true transparency and accurate reporting of data, these institutions spew a false form of transparency that’s doubly opaque, as it’s rigged to mask the skims of the insiders. Transparency: lost. Accountability: lost.
Do you really trust Facebook, Google, and the agencies that are supposed to provide oversight of these monopolies? If you said, “yes,” you’re joking, right?

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Government, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Society

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