Ethics / Trust

When Cause And Effect Converged With Humanity

November 21, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

Editor’s Note: Jim wrote the origins of this article and published it in Volume I, Issue 2 of his NEWSLETTER, November 21, 1999.

This is a story about how cause and effect merged parallel universes and one person made a difference that changed the course of human history.

As the 17th Century dawned on the New World, a manchild was born to the Patuxet tribe. His father named him Tisquantum. They were part of a confederation of tribes known as the Wampanoag (“eastern people”), inhabiting much of what became known as New England.

In time, Tisquantum would become a very important individual to the future of America, but not before his life would change in ways not to be imagined by any 17th-century Earthling. [Continue Reading]

Has America Crossed Its Rubicon?

October 5, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

Last week in our online poll we asked this question: “Should the House of Representatives stand on budget cuts, even if not passing a budget shuts down the government?”

And we offered these four answers, with response numbers at the end:

Doesn’t matter. It’s just more GOP theater – either way they’ll lose. 23%
Yes, we have to stop spending ourselves into bankruptcy. 47%
No, because government shutdowns always cost Republicans more politically. 27%
Doesn’t matter. The U.S. is already too far gone on so many levels. 3%

Of course, as is the case in so many questions about our federal government, this week’s topic came loaded with associated issues: 1) the basic obligation of getting a budget passed; 2) the political leverage both parties try to acquire in the process; 3) the dysfunction of deficit spending; 4) our prohibitive national debt; and, of course, 5) the beautifully messy system we call a representative republic that doesn’t leave the minority without options, however limited. Our aim this week was to offer answer options that would cover these issues.

In America, there’s an entire court system and set of laws devoted to what happens to regular folks when their financial reality looks like that of our federal government today. It’s called the bankruptcy system. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to see that[Continue Reading]

We Made The Experiment, And The Fruit Is Before Us

October 3, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

For more than 20 years in our online poll, we’ve asked our audience for their thoughts on a wide variety of Main Street subjects. Recently, we asked the following question with four response options, and results in parenthesis:

“Based on your observations, will younger generations – currently under 45 – be able to take full possession and manage the transfer of America’s business?”

• Absolutely. Just as well as any other group – maybe better (23%).

• Not looking great so far – high in entitlement and low in work ethic and critical thinking (26%).

• It seems they’re behind, but there is a minority – about 20% – who could save them (28%).

• Time marches on and each inheriting generation shapes their own future (23%).

In the hundreds of polls we’ve published, rarely has the tightness of the spread of responses been as noteworthy as the leading vote options. For now let’s set aside the 23% who defend the younger generations and the same group who equally defends humanity in general, and focus first on the leading responses.[Continue Reading]

Your Blockchain Close Encounter Of The First Kind

September 19, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

This is the third article in a series about Blockchain technology and its implications. The first, in June, was an introduction, and the second, in July, was how Blockchain works and its role in creating digital trust. This article is about your likely first contact.

As small businesses have increasingly become vertically integrated with Big Business customers, they’ve had to step up their Main-Street-Mom-and-Pop game to become more sophisticated while continuing to be nimble, quick, versatile, and efficient. With this integration, larger customers have notified smaller partners of their evolving expectations, as driven by macro events and trends.

Consequently, over the past 25 years, millions of small businesses have received letters requiring compliance with four of those macro markers: [Continue Reading]

When Blind Justice Had A Good Day

August 10, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

As you likely remember, the question asked last week in our online poll was: “What do you think about Hunter Biden’s plea deal failing this week?” And we offered these four response options:

It’s just more Conservative/MAGA theater to divert from Trump’s assault on the Constitution.
Thank God something/someone slowed the Biden DOJ’s banana republic approach to justice.
Doesn’t matter. Our country isn’t going to survive as a constitutional republic for much longer anyway.
What if we presented both the Biden and Trump cases to a court without names?

Below, along with the other responses, you’ll see that three-fourths of our folks went for #2. They were relieved to see that there’s still some level of blind justice in America today.

Is Hunter Biden, et al, guilty of all of the things being alleged? Well, when allowed to work as designed, that’s what the architecture of the American system of justice is designed to resolve. But as we’ve known since Henry II’s 12th-century legal reforms spawned the immortal English common law upon which our system is modeled, the mill grinds pure when unimpeded by politics.

[Continue Reading]

Blockchain: It’s The Future Of Trust

July 25, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to how Blockchain works. This offering is about how it can create digital trust. But first, let me remind you – Blockchain is a complicated topic, so thanks for your continued focus.

To understand Blockchain, we must first contemplate the primordial role of trust. Just as every chemical process in the human body takes place in the medium of water, every human interaction – each one – takes place in the medium of trust. As civilization, societies, and markets evolved, all were made manifest by the existence of, and singular devotion to trust. It’s the cornerstone, the keystone, and the capstone of our civilized existence. As the original open-source model, trust is the intangibly awesome foundation of equilibrium and creator of order.

This will be on the test: For 10,000 years, humans required analog trust. In the Digital Age, humans will require digital trust. As open-source technology beyond cryptocurrency, Blockchain is enabling trust’s metamorphosis from analog to digital, as it becomes synonymous with digital trust.

For Satoshi Nakamoto, creating Bitcoin was easy. But making his peer-to-peer cryptocurrency deliver on[Continue Reading]