Protecting and Rewarding Hate is Not Moral Authority (Post Awareness)

Sometimes hate warps and infects institutions and when that happens there are few to no backstops without intervention. People who feel ethnocentric entitlement to "The Clan" will protect and reward bad behaviors simply so they can maintain their social positions. We want to avoid clan nepotism in services and outcomes. This is why its imporant to have different perspectives and opinions so as to ensure we are not rewarding hate financially or socially. Selling that to those who have a vested interest in places and placting hate despite the duties of their roles and positions is more of an uphill battle. This is why federal oversight might be necessary where checks and balances fell like dominos. Two other ways of dealing with stickiness of values is voting out hate supporters and reforming higher up the chain to ensure some level of accountability.

"[125/365] Domino Effect"
by pasukaru76 is marked with CC0 1.0.

Hypothetical Example:

Let us consider a hypothetical example for learning purposes. Someone wanted to gain socially and financially from hate and spread bigoted rumors to a number of corrupted officials who then targeted people within their community. Some of those corrupted officials were connected to extremists and that raised a few eyebrows. The more people came forward and complained, the more people were retaliated against and evidence/data was falsified. The local justice system was supposed to protect all of the community but felt that certain ethnocentric homogeneous social groups were above the law. Perpetrators were protected, victims were intentionally left holding the bag of moral failures, and there was no attempt to correct despite the lost moral authority. 

While we know such examples like this couldn't happen in modern times because if they did we would do everything within our power to correct. One way to correct beyond federal oversight is to vote out any official who engaged in such hate and didn't do their job as would be expected in alignment with their oaths that includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the Constitution, and human and civil rights. Where the wider system fails it then rests again on the good people of a community to flip the script on hate and lack of reasonable accountability. 

The key point of this hypothetical learning example is to provide an opportunity for each of us to come to grips with needed changes in our society that furthers the interest and alignment of our values to something that can be sustained generation after generation. It is this line of belief that has furthered our national interests and that is something that any patriotic citizen should support through peaceful and encouraging words of wisdom. We are all in this ship together so let us start rowing together to see if we can make it over the horizon. Poem the Island of Axis Mundi

This article provides some insight into some failures and solutions. Lynn Sharp Paine “Managing for Organizational Integrity”

In this example we had people who knew wrong doing was going on and when key decision makers became aware the local system didn't correct as well as it should. How High-Integrity Leaders Can Help Employees Speak Up  You can also read Unveiling the Mechanisms through Which Leader Integrity Shapes Ethical Leadership Behavior: Theory of Planned Behavior Perspective

*This is part of a hypothetical example for learning purposes. It is a type of thought experiment on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, The Constitution, civil and human rights. Take with a grain of salt. 

Escanaba Fosters Good Governance with Master Plan Survey

Cities that grow and develop are going to things differently than others. They are going to draw in as many people as they can. Many places seek to limit decision making and narrow who is involved to get it passed. However, some places do create opportunities for people to get involved and that in turn leads to greater community engagement. If there is one thing that Escanaba does well is engage its community members who have a stake in the long term success of the town. 

Escanaba Unknown Date

Escanaba has increasingly become a hot spot for investment and vacationing. The town seeks to continue to grow as a place that thinks about the quality of life of its residents and their future opportunities. They are developing best practices that many other local, stake and even federal stakeholders should watch as a model for creating something new from the good works of those who came before. Visit Escanaba

If your a resident consider Esky Master Plan Survey Article

There are best practices and research that help support the idea of engagement that leads to long term choices that improve society. Best Practices Public Engagement and Research on Community Engagement. These articles help us think about the developing of higher levels of engagement and its influence on ensuring decsions are well rounded for community members. 

Real GDP and Personal Income Rise in Most States Q1-Q2, 2024

It appears that real GDP and personal income grew in Michigan rapidly from Q1-Q2, 2024. Real GDP for the nation was 3% while in Michigan 4.2% and current dollar increase national 5.2% and 6.1% for Michigan during the same timeframe. You may want to look up your own state.

Gross Domestic Product by State and Personal Income by State, 2nd Quarter 2024

For my own research purposes I want to see if we continue to grow at a slightly faster rate than prior to Covid as indicative of a platform change. 

The Use of Dashboards to Monitor Cluster Health

“‘Data! Data! Data!’ he cried impatiently. ‘I can’t make bricks without clay.'” 

 Sherlock Holmes

It is hard to make decisions without good data and being informed of the events and changes in the market. To sell the value of joining and investing in a cluster will be difficult if one doesn't not know what they are offering. Therefore, data that creates a holistic view of a community can help in creating stronger evidence based decision making where many compounding factors are difficult to decipher. A method of creating a level of broad understanding can lead to long term improvements in outcomes as each decision and understanding influences the decisions of key figures but also the many businesses and people within a cluster. 

One of the best ways to understand the market is to have data that can summarize the activities of the area as well as open up opportunities cross compare data to find realtions and with luck cause and effect. One might even consider the ability to measure how clusters form and change based on market changes. For example, does a new manufacturing facility lead to tax revenue increases and property value (i.e. net positives) or how might $5K in new advertising increase vacationers and investors. The ability to manage and understand the functioning health and appeal of a cluster can come from a well designed dashboard that is updated to determine cluster changes. 

Cluster Dashboard Examples:

Dashboards are increasingly being used in managing and understanding how cities function. Sometimes these metrics are geared around traditional needs. There are often new metrics that can be implemented that would provide data for businesses within clusters to make decisions. Because government and business are related but slightly different a dashboard in a cluster would be focused more on investability, social development retention (activites, quality of life, clubs, recreation, etc.), human capital development (education, skills available, etc.), loss & prevention (crime/law enforcement, etc.), industrial sites available (amount, value, type, etc.), infrastructure (rail, internet, etc.), institutions (cost, effectiveness, etc.), or industry (i.e. tourism, hotel occupancy, amount spent per visit, advertising, etc.) and others. One can design the metrics how they see fit for making decisions. 

(San Diego has a Dashboard you can look at San Diego Peformance Dashboard. For a cluster I would change this around and likely have the main benchmarks on a single page and when I click them they go down into the secondary measurements/data.)

The dashboards not only improve decision making but also provide sufficient data to start drawing some casual relationship between events and that can do wonders in seeing if an event/activity is working for the community cluster or if it hasn't had much of an impact. For example marketing to entrepreneurs and investors might lead to increased investment in the same way as an effective marketing strategy might improve vacation revenue. 

Other times we can create interaction of how one industry impacts and supports another and increase the health of the whole. For example, let us say the rest of the economy takes a downturn but the unique industry and community mix of a cluster shows that most of the businesses didn't experience this same downturn. Perhaps the industry of X widget manufacturing declines globally but we find that it grew within the cluster. We would never know the effectiveness of the cluster or how to improve it without having some level of bencharkable measurements. 

Key Points:

-Dashboards provide data for decision making on the various aspects of the cluster. 

-Dashboards can be created around cluster needs and can be unique to that cluster. 

-Dashboards might help find relationships between industries and/or cuase and effect of activities.

-Dashboards help improve decision making.

-Dashboards can help determine whether a cluster and/or industry is beating the market.

-Dashboards can measure long term changes and performance in clusters.

(Speeding up the writing of this book a little because it just looks like a good time to sort of get it out and done and move on.) 

The Importace of Patriotic Values in Society (Post Awareness)

The necessity of good values in society is what keeps us growing as a healthy community and healthy nation. Concepts such as truth, justice, fairness, integrity, humanity make us who we are. Good people protect those values because they lead to togetherness. These ideas build great people with great communities, so we should support such deeply rooted universal human beliefs. It has been known to draw the most people and rally them around higher perceptions of life and that can help create vitality and reach.

The polar opposite of healthy values are ideas such as deceit, dishonesty, corruption, lost integrity, so on, and so forth. Equally deeply rooted in the human conscious. These are the values that erode the foundation of society and lead to decline as a people. Where some power players are confused between what is right and what is wrong, we have a path that is fraught with all types of unknowns. 

Let me give you a hypothetical example for learning purposes where our values can come into question and where they can be reaffirmed. Someone wanted something and spread hate filled rumors to corrupt officials who engaged in misbehaviors against people who believed in their community and against minorites who were ostracized by the "in group". There were no backstops, no reversals of the rewards of hate, and no realignment to a higher moral authority despite overwhelming evidence and public knowledge. The multitudes of citizen concerns brought forward were swept away as though they had no value in our society. A type of system default.

We, as human species, know the difference between right and wrong even if sometimes authority is missused to encourage poor behaviors that foster the breakdown of moral order so as to feed false identities and entitled social networks. It is important to support what is good and feel a sense of loss when the wrong is normalized and encouraged. Each of us has a hand in who and what our future will look like. I think it will be bright if we reaffirm our core values.

One possible explanation of why this happens based in the video is because of these subconcious distortions of symbolism on who is valued in society and who is not. The same can be said for waining desirability of institutional integrity and that leads to quick hueritic beliefs that temporarily feed the sense of self, or one's "in group" at the expense of everyone else. 

Good leaders can self analyze and use critial thinking to overcome their weaknesses. They can foster their commitment to the long term needs of society and their nation through their shared deep beliefs. Poor leaders relish and bank off of such distortions for self gain (the unconscious needs). As a rational optimist I believe learning examples like this can do more good for society in overcoming that inner darkness that seems to bubble up from time to time. 

Don't be hasty in judgement because good things can come just like new flowers bud after every drought; in this case a drought of moral conscious. The seeds of democracy were sown many generations ago from men and women who sought to build a free land where people can live in peace and harmony. It is our heirloom.

Standing for our central values of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the Constitution, and human and civil rights is what makes us good citizens and worthy of leadership. As you go upon your day today, think about the small acts of kindness and good moral conscience that you can do to preserve the health of our society and democracy. It doesn't take much to create a better world. Support each other and help each other succeed and we all win. Pay it forward with kind patriotism to buid a sense of community. 

*This is a hypothethetical example for learning purposes so take with a grain of salt. A thought experiment on freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the Constitution and commitment to moral/civil rights.

The Concept of Fairness, Hate, Corruption, and Extremism (Post Awareness)

The concept of fairness is rooted into all of our social contracts and human interactions. Therefore it is fundamental to who we are as a people. Those who cheat that spirit to encourage hate, corruption, and extremism have sold out their most fundamental purpose and mandates. That can happen when selfish people want things and that is more likely in places where those who are engaged in corruption are immune for such behaviors due to a lack of backstops and misunderstanding of the purpose of law and the institutions. In this example, no matter how poor the behaviors there is a desire to reward perpetrators at the expense of victims and to do this consistently to many different people. Where these behaviors have become common we also find a need for additional Federal oversight.

The Hypothetical Example: 

This is a hypothetical example for learning purposes. Someone wanted something and spread false rumors to damage, ostracize and financially reward themselves off of hate. They were successful even though everyone knew it was wrong. Connected to a number of corrupted officials the victims were further targeted by a rogue minority of wayward officials and extremist groups who shared social connections. In this case, it was well known throughout the entire local justice system that great injustices were occuring but for political distortion and social support victims have no protection or recourse. Good officials forced into silence to protect corrupted officials. The system completely defaulted and people protected that default for political and ideological purposes. Community members stood up to the corruption only to have multiple complaints by many different people ignored and wiped away to protect ethnocentric identities and distorted perspectives. Data and evidence also quickly rejected in order to ensure that certain behaviors can continue on without recourse leading to a perception of institutional decline and the backsliding of democracy. More victims came forward and their rights were swept away as well so we can consider there is little commitment to making things better so repeat of patterned behaviors continue on. 

Now this is an example for learning purposes and it is often something that we should come to understand and come to grips with. Like this video states trying to do the right thing doesn't do much when indifference and darkness is part of our decision making. Those of us who stand up for justice are seen as second class citizens and in a great diverse nation such as ourselves we are going to need to find a new path forward. We will have to start to listen to all of our society versus just some of the more selfish entitled members. Let us praise when people do the right thing and let us look with disdain when hate, corruption, and extremism are rewarded and encouraged. The end result does come to define us and has an impact on our future (We can see some of that playing out now.). I believe all Americans have rights but am just one voice howling in the wind. Commitment to a greater purpose and the next leg of democratic development is lacking among many. Let us advocate for greater effort toward fair treatment, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, the Constitution and Civil/Human Rights as a truer metric of what it means to be a patriot and faithful citizen. Support what is good over what is bad and feel good that despite the outcome you were part of the solution and did your best to set the playing field for our children and grandchildren's success. Change is a must for the health of whole but commitment to change appears lacking.

*This is a hypothetical learning example. It is a type of thought experiment on freedom of religion, speech, commitment to the Constitution and human/civil rights. Take with a grain of salt.

Real GDP Q2 2024 is at 3%: Will Stability and Growth Be Possible with Fundamental Economic Changes Over the Past Few Years?

Real GDP Q2 2024 is at 3% beating some of the expectations. You can read a really nice analysis of GDP in Q2GDP Third Estimate. In particular I like the historical analysis and the charts. As a person conducting a little economic research and the changes in our economy. I am looking at growth rate GDP and volatility. If after COVID pushed businessed to adapt and the economy digitize quickly with new infrastructure and necessity it is hope we see a general stronger GDP and more stability. There are a couple of charts where you can see a possible trend forming but isn't long enough to say conclusively because it could take a long time to determine if there was significant change. 

Stability and higher growth could happen because new infrastructure and a push by the environment brought on by the Pandemic forces companies and the economy itself to adapt. i.e. more digital assets and virtual work.  Infrastructure with new technology on top of it is going to speed things up. That means many more microtransactions that could increase the growth rate of a large economy like ours. Typically a larger will have slower growth when compared to emerging economies. It is also the multiplication of the microtransactions that can lead to stability as natural behaviors of people within the economy optimize faster. 

Do I know if any of that is true? Nope...no idea but so far it has been more right than wrong. The thing about theory is you don't really care....just see if it is one explanation of the puzzle that ends up bring true or not true. 🤷 Sure, you care about the economy but in my mind people who theorize should be relatively indifferent to the results so they can be more accurate. 

The video below indicates the economy is still pretty strong but the consumers may not be saving as much as they should so they could be spending those reserves down.