Posts Tagged trust

The Challenges of Complexity

Last night, I attended a dinner in Lafayette. A delightful man at my table turned out to be a retired environmental engineer, and during the conversation, the subject of fracking came up. I’ve had a good deal of trepidation about the practice, so I was surprised when he said that–done with a reasonable level of [...]

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Loss of Trust

In 2009, I wrote a book titled Distrust, American Style in which I argued that a loss of trust in our social institutions–and especially in our government–has had significant negative consequences for our ability to function as a productive society. Things haven’t improved since 2009. If anything, our levels of distrust have continued to grow, [...]

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Who Do You Trust?

In its business section this morning, the New York Times had a lengthy story about Angie’s List, the Indianapolis-based company that offers members access to reviews of service providers of various kinds. The reviews are provided by the members, and the article noted that–unlike sites like Yelp!–those reviews are not anonymous. While Angie’s list doesn’t [...]

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Who Can We Trust?

The Indianapolis Star has been advocating rather forcefully for laws to tighten restrictions on the lobbyists who exercise increasing power at the Statehouse. The Star argues that such restrictions are necessary if we are to restore a modicum of trust in our legislative body.  They’re right.  My most recent book—“Distrust, American Style”—was an inquiry into [...]

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Our Current Mess–a recent rant

[The other night, I spoke to the Washington Township Democratic Club, and thought I'd post those remarks here.]                                                  When I labeled this talk “The Current Mess” it was because I hadn’t decided what to talk about, and I figured “mess” covered pretty much anything I might choose—locally, I might be talking about our Mayor. [...]

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