Doug Casey on the Collapse of Trust in American Institutions

Via International Man

International Man: According to a recent Gallup poll, the American people’s confidence in their leaders and most important institutions has collapsed to the lowest figure ever recorded.

Americans have never been more distrustful of the federal government, big business, the media, the education system, science institutions, the medical establishment, big tech companies, and law enforcement.

What is your take?

Doug Casey: The distrust is well deserved. Of course, if you want to see a real collapse of confidence in institutions—and the institutions themselves—we might look at Haiti. This is what happens when a society is on the ragged edge of a revolution, a civil war, or a societal collapse.

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“Trust No One!”

Authored by Michael Krieger via LibertyBlitzkrieg.com,

The title of today’s post is not meant to be taken literally. I trust plenty of people. I trust friends who’ve demonstrated their trustworthiness over the years. I trust my family. Having people in my life I love and trust makes everything far more meaningful and pleasant. I hope people reading this likewise have a circle of trust they’ve built over the years.

On the other hand, you should never trust anyone or anything that hasn’t given you good reason to do so, and if someone or something gives you good reason not to trust them, you should never forget that. The more power a person or institution has in society, the less trustworthy they tend to be. I don’t say this because it’s fun to be cynical, I say this because my life experience has demonstrated its accuracy.

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Trust Nothing

Guest Post by The Zman

The official story on the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election is that nothing happened and citizens should return to the economic duties. A few over-enthusiastic agents engaged in nothing more than office gossip. All is well. Like everything that comes from the rulers, this is all nonsense, but this is just how things are with a highly corrupt ruling class. The rulers don’t lie because they are hiding something. They lie because they take pleasure in humiliating the people.

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For The Average Investor, The Next Bear Market Will Likely Be The Last

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Just recently Anna-Louise Jackson published an interesting article asking if “The Financial Crisis” still haunted your investing. To wit:

“This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the current bull market’s beginnings. Yet, many Americans remain reluctant to invest in the stock market, a scary hangover from the 2007-09 recession.

From October 2007 to March 2009, the S&P 500 plummeted nearly 57% and it took more than five years for the index to recover. But the share of Americans with money invested in the stock market still hasn’t returned to pre-recession levels, according to various studies.

In 2018, a Gallup Poll survey found 55% of respondents were invested in stocks or stock funds, either personally or jointly with a spouse, down from 65% in 2007. Among those younger than 35, the drop-off is especially pronounced: An average of 38% of the youngest Americans owned stocks from 2008 to 2018, down from 52% in the 2006-2007 period.”

The rest of the article is the typical pedestrian advice of accepting that bear markets happen, ride it out, and hope for the best. (Read this for why you shouldn’t.)

What Anna missed was the most crucial aspect of what is happening to the relationship between individuals and Wall Street.

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Reimagining Trusted Intermediaries

Via Medium

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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Western Media Credibility In Free Fall Collapse

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

The latest from the Gallup Poll is that only 32% of Amerians trust the print and TV media to tell the truth. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx
Republicans, 18 to 49 year old Americans, and independents trust the media even less, with trust rates of 14%, 26%, and 30%.

The only group that can produce a majority that still trusts the media are Democrats with a 51% trust rate in print and TV reporting. The next highest trust rate is Americans over 50 years of age with a trust rate of 38 percent.

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The Low-Trust State

Guest Post by The Zman

Social trust is one of those things that we know is important to economic growth, sound government and social stability. When the people of a society generally trust one another and wish to be trusted by others, their society prospers. The question that always arises is over causality. Some would argue that altruism is a biological trait that scales up to social trust. Others would argue that good government and the rule of law encourages positive economic growth, which in turn increases social trust. It is one of those topics that keeps academics busy.

The distinguishing characteristic of low-trust societies is a near total lack of trust in the state by the people. Russians, during the old Soviet Union, understood that everything that was said by the state was a lie of some sort. In fact, the only thing they could trust from the Bolsheviks was that whatever they said was untrue. This amplified the natural distrust of Russians as they did not have an authority to which they could appeal in order to arbitrate disputes. Contracts have to be enforceable before anyone will enter into them.

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THINGS MORE TRUSTWORTHY THAN HILLARY CLINTON

  1. El Chapo’s last prison guards
  2. Tom Brady with an air pressure guage
  3. Steve Harvey announcing the winner of a beauty contest
  4. Dinner party planned by Walder Frey
  5. Lucy as a holder
  6. The snake in the Garden of Eden
  7. Rachel Dolezal identifying as black
  8. Kanye West at an Awards Show
  9. Kim and Kanye naming my child
  10. Bill Cosby’s Bartending
  11. Drinking tap water in Flint Michigan
  12. The Judgment of the Nobel Committee
  13. Bernie Sanders around other people’s money
  14. Al Gore’s predictions about global warming, er, climate change um, global cooling orrr, whatever’s next
  15. Brian Williams
  16. Chipotle beef
  17. A fart when you’ve had diarrhea all day
  18. The guy with the Indian accent calling from the IRS who’s asking for my Social Security number
  19. Guys who circle the playground in a rusted ice cream truck that plays “Thank Heaven For Little Girls”
  20. Michael Vick dog sitting
  21. Disney Crocodiles
  22. “Islam is the religion of peace.”
  23. Bill, with a cigar, in a room full of Interns
  24. Vince Foster’s “Suicide” note
  25. Casey Anthony as a babysitter
  26. Truck stop sushi
  27. Old man in windowless van full of candy & duct tape in a school zone
  28. Michael Moore at an Old Country Buffet
  29. Joe Biden behind me with his hands on my shoulders
  30. Mexican tap water


QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

Ernest Hemingway

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island