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Showing posts with the label trust

Too many Covid Experts - Whom should we trust?

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 The answer seems to be: nobody! With Covid raging on, we are all living under fear and stress. Countries such as China, New Zealand, or Japan that succeeded in keeping it contained, are hunkering down behind Chinese Walls, while the rest of the World is desperately searching for miracle cures. Our daily life is heavily influenced by coping and surviving under Covid19. Self-proclaimed Covid19 experts are inundating us with a never-ending stream of news and insights. These experts come from two opposing sides: mainstream science and government experts on the one side, and conspiracy theorists on the other side.  Figuring out whom to believe, with so many “experts” contradicting each other can become a real headache. Politicians, regulators, and scientists in different countries, and even within the same country, are fundamentally disagreeing and fighting with each other about the best strategies for coping with the disease.  To shed some light, we did a coolhunting using G...

The US – a Loophole Society – or a Society of Trust?

My immersion into the loophole society concept took place in 2007 when I was bringing used computers to Ghana, to be donated to schools. While the total value of the computers was about $1200, getting them through Ghanaian customs took two weeks and cost me another $1200. I had to hire an agent, who was a relative of the headmaster at the receiving school, who expected to be paid $200 to shepherd me through the myriad customs clearance offices. This customs process, designed to plug customs loopholes for importers, doubled the costs of the goods. However when I had delivered the computers I found out that I could have bought the same computers for about $1200 on the public Makola market in Accra – so it seems clever people always find ways to exploit the loopholes. It is my perception that the loophole society concept is not restricted to African countries. Even the US has become more and more a society where people exploiting loopholes are rewarded and admired. Last week we learned t...