Founder's Blog by Steve Thompson
Headline: Dementia Joe Says Americans Can Buy Any Car They Want but His Regime Is Forcing EVs to Be Huge Share of Sales by 2032
Logical Conclusion (ceteris paribus): Americans' cars will look like Cubans in 10 years, American automakers will be bankrupt, and the economy will be in depression.
Headline: New tactic emerges in anti-Israel campus activism: Withholding students’ grades
Logical Conclusion (ceteris paribus): More bankrupt higher education institutions. More intolerance, hate and sedition will deliver more parents who refuse to fund said insanity.
Logical Conclusion (ceteris paribus): Americans' cars will look like Cubans in 10 years, American automakers will be bankrupt, and the economy will be in depression.
Headline: New tactic emerges in anti-Israel campus activism: Withholding students’ grades
Logical Conclusion (ceteris paribus): More bankrupt higher education institutions. More intolerance, hate and sedition will deliver more parents who refuse to fund said insanity.
National character in terms of national health
March 27, 2024
“Greatness comes from character, and character isn’t formed out of smart people—it’s formed out of people who suffered,” said Jensen Huang recently to captivated Stanford students.
Huang is the founder/CEO of Nvidia. He is worth $80B and built the firm leading the West into the future of artificial intelligence.
I believe Huang speaks of wisdom. Wisdom isn't knowledge, it's the insights gleaned from learning, mostly through failure, loss and error.
"People with high expectations have low resilience," Huang also said. I concur: knowledge and good judgment earned from repeated attempts to succeed generate wisdom and persistence.
I have said for decades "most people have to learn the hard way most of the time!" Learning knowledge is relatively easy, but combining knowledge, experience, persistence and good judgment is hard work. Or in Huang's words, character. In my words, it's the maturing from selfishness to selflessness.
So how do we define and measure the character of a country and the health, or strength, of that character?
A reasonable person would assume different types of governmental systems muddy the waters.
Turns out not to be the case. In Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson defined a near universal classification standard to measure the ‘health’ of countries.
Acemoglu and Robinson define, based on research of failed nations, the standard of whether societies are either Inclusive or Extractive among their economic and political institutions.
Inclusive means basically for the good of the country. Extractive means for the good of the few.
Reflecting on Huang’s comments in terms of a state, or nation, I realized the human cycle, or ‘character continuum,’ extends to nations. So if economic and political leaders are implementing Extractive decisions more than 90 percent of the time on a continuous basis, common sense tells you these individuals might be 'smart' but definitely have no character!
When we compare this continuum to Professor Alexander Tyler’s Civilization Sequence, we see a very strong correlation in terms of both stage (Bondage) and time (248 years since the Declaration of Independence versus democracy mean (average) death at 200 years). By time I specifically mean a mature, arrogant culture living a life of great wealth, luxury and convenience.
In other words, a silver-spoon-fed nation. A nation with minimal character compared to our ancestors.
To put this another way, there is a direct relationship between challenge and character: the more challenges experienced and overcome the greater the character, and vice versa.
Wisdom, documented from Huang's observations to the Civilization Sequence.
We witness this today in our youth: they demand gold stars (verbal coddling in the form of appreciation) just for showing up for work, even if they’re hours or days late.
This also explains woke people: individuals with abundant character are very tolerant and open-minded, earned through wisdom. Conversely, individuals with little or no character are intolerant and closed-minded: they don’t want their constructs and narratives burst by truth and reality. To wit: https://www.theblaze.com/news/study-woke-unhappy-anxious-depressed?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd...
The results? One possible current epitome of lack of character, not to mention morals, by a current silver-spoon-fed Snowflake: According to FTX Trading CEO John Ray, the harm caused by Sam Bankman-Fried is “vast” and his remorse is “nonexistent.” (https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/03/22/current-ftx-ceo-says-disgraced-fraudster-sam-bankman-fried...)
Getting back to our main subject, Sorting Hat documents the U.S. is deep in Bondage country of the Civilization Sequence. The latest poll provides the evidence: “An overwhelming 81% majority of voters said that American democracy is currently being threatened, according to a new poll from the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service (https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/georgetown-poll-democracy/2024/03/21/id/1158124/).
Not headed in the wrong direction, but threatened—internally!
So what am I saying?
1. All of the measurement models on Sorting Hat correlate with each other AND confirm recent polls and what common sense tells a very large percentage of Americans: our national character and health are in very bad shape. No one can avoid Fake News, but the measurement models of Sorting Hat track very closely with facts, truths and realty. In other words, Sorting Hat's data is very reliable for Americans. As noted in Proverbs 11:14, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in abundance of counselors there is safety.”
2. Why Nations Fail (WNF) provides and common criteria all government officials can and should use to make national decisions. Again I draw on Proverbs (14:34): “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
3. WNF also provides decision criteria (Inclusive vs. Extractive) we Americans can demand our leaders use in economic and political decisions going forward. This includes leaders across the government, national to local, as well as industry (pubilc, private and NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations]).
Will this solve all our problems? No.
But it very well could save the country from imploding and start us back on the very long road to health. As noted in 2 Chronicles: 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Measuring and reporting the health of our nation
Dec. 5, 2023
Obviously the world offers many sources of news, so why should you switch to Sorting Hat?
First, you don't have to switch: you could add, using Sorting Hat's news as a catchall, especially if you've had a hectic day interrupting your news routine.
Second, Sorting Hat's collects news globally because we are an interconnected world.
Third, Sorting Hat's news pulls news from every source, not just "approved" sources. In other words, no censoring.
Fourth, we provide all the relevant political, economic and cultural news. If the news day ends up being 100 articles, you get 100 articles, not 4 or 6 (editorial censoring).
Fifth, Sorting Hat's news organizes by issue, sub-issue and continent. This gives readers perspective of of each issue globally. In other words, you can see where the subject is or is not causing an issue, and to what degree on that continent as well as in relation to the United States.
Sixth, Sorting Hat's news is concise: you can scan the entire list of news articles, then dive into only those of interest, yet still get full situational awareness of daily world events.
Seventh, Sorting Hat's news is remotely accessible. Prefer to read your news in transit to and from work? Simply sign up for e-mail distribution and the report will be ready by the time you go to work in the morning for reading on your mobile device.
And by the way, Today's News becomes tomorrow's data for all of our models:
Why Nations Fail
Civilization Sequence
Sovereign Financial Stages
Bill of Rights
Events & Issues
8 Steps to Communism
Measuring and reporting the health of our nation
Nov. 19, 2023
Our country, i.e. the Constitutional Republic, is on it's death bed, comatose while on life support.
Personally, I believe America died Jan. 20, 2021 and history may yet prove me correct.
My evidence?
Four macro models on Sorting Hat (www.sorting-hat.org) demonstrating our country is at the end of the respective political, cultural and economic/financial continuums.
All four models concur. In other words, all four models support my statements above.
The cause?
In my humble opinion, the core cause is the intractable divide between the philosophy of the Left and Right. Unfortunately, public discourse has yet found a way to bridge the gap.
Three of the four Sorting Hat models do not provide a way ahead for Americans, but the Why Nations Fail model does.
Written by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, they studied many historical governmental models, of all ideologies, to develop a universal standard of success or failure of countries.
Their standard of whether societies succeed or fail is whether the respective economic and political institutions are either Inclusive or Extractive.
Of the four different combinations, they document only one maintains a healthy nation: Inclusive Economic AND Inclusive Political institutions.
How do they define Inclusive and Extractive?
Inclusive societies have economic and political institutions featuring secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services providing a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; they also permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers.
Inclusive institutions foster economic activity, productivity growth, and economic prosperity.
Extractive economic and political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power. Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of the society. Extractive economic institutions thus naturally accompany extractive political institutions.
In other words, Inclusive means for the good of the country as a whole and Extractive means for the good of the few (Elite).
So what's the way ahead?
Instead of butting heads or yelling past each other, Sorting Hat applies the success/failure standard of Why Nations Fail to news articles to measure where our country stands.
Our goal at Sorting Hat is to educate Americans about Acemoglu and Robinson's research; their timeless, universal standard of national success; and then inform Americans daily of our country's actions and policies vis-à-vis their standard.
Our mission is to focus Americans on building and maintaining a prosperous nation using this standard as a new paradigm for consensus to improve the health of our nation.
March 27, 2024
“Greatness comes from character, and character isn’t formed out of smart people—it’s formed out of people who suffered,” said Jensen Huang recently to captivated Stanford students.
Huang is the founder/CEO of Nvidia. He is worth $80B and built the firm leading the West into the future of artificial intelligence.
I believe Huang speaks of wisdom. Wisdom isn't knowledge, it's the insights gleaned from learning, mostly through failure, loss and error.
"People with high expectations have low resilience," Huang also said. I concur: knowledge and good judgment earned from repeated attempts to succeed generate wisdom and persistence.
I have said for decades "most people have to learn the hard way most of the time!" Learning knowledge is relatively easy, but combining knowledge, experience, persistence and good judgment is hard work. Or in Huang's words, character. In my words, it's the maturing from selfishness to selflessness.
So how do we define and measure the character of a country and the health, or strength, of that character?
A reasonable person would assume different types of governmental systems muddy the waters.
Turns out not to be the case. In Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson defined a near universal classification standard to measure the ‘health’ of countries.
Acemoglu and Robinson define, based on research of failed nations, the standard of whether societies are either Inclusive or Extractive among their economic and political institutions.
Inclusive means basically for the good of the country. Extractive means for the good of the few.
Reflecting on Huang’s comments in terms of a state, or nation, I realized the human cycle, or ‘character continuum,’ extends to nations. So if economic and political leaders are implementing Extractive decisions more than 90 percent of the time on a continuous basis, common sense tells you these individuals might be 'smart' but definitely have no character!
When we compare this continuum to Professor Alexander Tyler’s Civilization Sequence, we see a very strong correlation in terms of both stage (Bondage) and time (248 years since the Declaration of Independence versus democracy mean (average) death at 200 years). By time I specifically mean a mature, arrogant culture living a life of great wealth, luxury and convenience.
In other words, a silver-spoon-fed nation. A nation with minimal character compared to our ancestors.
To put this another way, there is a direct relationship between challenge and character: the more challenges experienced and overcome the greater the character, and vice versa.
Wisdom, documented from Huang's observations to the Civilization Sequence.
We witness this today in our youth: they demand gold stars (verbal coddling in the form of appreciation) just for showing up for work, even if they’re hours or days late.
This also explains woke people: individuals with abundant character are very tolerant and open-minded, earned through wisdom. Conversely, individuals with little or no character are intolerant and closed-minded: they don’t want their constructs and narratives burst by truth and reality. To wit: https://www.theblaze.com/news/study-woke-unhappy-anxious-depressed?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd...
The results? One possible current epitome of lack of character, not to mention morals, by a current silver-spoon-fed Snowflake: According to FTX Trading CEO John Ray, the harm caused by Sam Bankman-Fried is “vast” and his remorse is “nonexistent.” (https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/03/22/current-ftx-ceo-says-disgraced-fraudster-sam-bankman-fried...)
Getting back to our main subject, Sorting Hat documents the U.S. is deep in Bondage country of the Civilization Sequence. The latest poll provides the evidence: “An overwhelming 81% majority of voters said that American democracy is currently being threatened, according to a new poll from the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service (https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/georgetown-poll-democracy/2024/03/21/id/1158124/).
Not headed in the wrong direction, but threatened—internally!
So what am I saying?
1. All of the measurement models on Sorting Hat correlate with each other AND confirm recent polls and what common sense tells a very large percentage of Americans: our national character and health are in very bad shape. No one can avoid Fake News, but the measurement models of Sorting Hat track very closely with facts, truths and realty. In other words, Sorting Hat's data is very reliable for Americans. As noted in Proverbs 11:14, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in abundance of counselors there is safety.”
2. Why Nations Fail (WNF) provides and common criteria all government officials can and should use to make national decisions. Again I draw on Proverbs (14:34): “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
3. WNF also provides decision criteria (Inclusive vs. Extractive) we Americans can demand our leaders use in economic and political decisions going forward. This includes leaders across the government, national to local, as well as industry (pubilc, private and NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations]).
Will this solve all our problems? No.
But it very well could save the country from imploding and start us back on the very long road to health. As noted in 2 Chronicles: 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Measuring and reporting the health of our nation
Dec. 5, 2023
Obviously the world offers many sources of news, so why should you switch to Sorting Hat?
First, you don't have to switch: you could add, using Sorting Hat's news as a catchall, especially if you've had a hectic day interrupting your news routine.
Second, Sorting Hat's collects news globally because we are an interconnected world.
Third, Sorting Hat's news pulls news from every source, not just "approved" sources. In other words, no censoring.
Fourth, we provide all the relevant political, economic and cultural news. If the news day ends up being 100 articles, you get 100 articles, not 4 or 6 (editorial censoring).
Fifth, Sorting Hat's news organizes by issue, sub-issue and continent. This gives readers perspective of of each issue globally. In other words, you can see where the subject is or is not causing an issue, and to what degree on that continent as well as in relation to the United States.
Sixth, Sorting Hat's news is concise: you can scan the entire list of news articles, then dive into only those of interest, yet still get full situational awareness of daily world events.
Seventh, Sorting Hat's news is remotely accessible. Prefer to read your news in transit to and from work? Simply sign up for e-mail distribution and the report will be ready by the time you go to work in the morning for reading on your mobile device.
And by the way, Today's News becomes tomorrow's data for all of our models:
Why Nations Fail
Civilization Sequence
Sovereign Financial Stages
Bill of Rights
Events & Issues
8 Steps to Communism
Measuring and reporting the health of our nation
Nov. 19, 2023
Our country, i.e. the Constitutional Republic, is on it's death bed, comatose while on life support.
Personally, I believe America died Jan. 20, 2021 and history may yet prove me correct.
My evidence?
Four macro models on Sorting Hat (www.sorting-hat.org) demonstrating our country is at the end of the respective political, cultural and economic/financial continuums.
All four models concur. In other words, all four models support my statements above.
The cause?
In my humble opinion, the core cause is the intractable divide between the philosophy of the Left and Right. Unfortunately, public discourse has yet found a way to bridge the gap.
Three of the four Sorting Hat models do not provide a way ahead for Americans, but the Why Nations Fail model does.
Written by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, they studied many historical governmental models, of all ideologies, to develop a universal standard of success or failure of countries.
Their standard of whether societies succeed or fail is whether the respective economic and political institutions are either Inclusive or Extractive.
Of the four different combinations, they document only one maintains a healthy nation: Inclusive Economic AND Inclusive Political institutions.
How do they define Inclusive and Extractive?
Inclusive societies have economic and political institutions featuring secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services providing a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; they also permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers.
Inclusive institutions foster economic activity, productivity growth, and economic prosperity.
Extractive economic and political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power. Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of the society. Extractive economic institutions thus naturally accompany extractive political institutions.
In other words, Inclusive means for the good of the country as a whole and Extractive means for the good of the few (Elite).
So what's the way ahead?
Instead of butting heads or yelling past each other, Sorting Hat applies the success/failure standard of Why Nations Fail to news articles to measure where our country stands.
Our goal at Sorting Hat is to educate Americans about Acemoglu and Robinson's research; their timeless, universal standard of national success; and then inform Americans daily of our country's actions and policies vis-à-vis their standard.
Our mission is to focus Americans on building and maintaining a prosperous nation using this standard as a new paradigm for consensus to improve the health of our nation.