Negativity vs. The Right Thing on The Big Issues of the Day – Top 3 Takeaways
Takeaway #1: The allure of negativity
A few questions for you today. In your view who's the greatest sports coach of all-time? In your personal life, who is the greatest coach you played for in school, or who is the greatest leader you've worked for professionally? Who is the greatest political leader of your lifetime? Now, why is it that you answered the way you did with regard to the greatest coaches, boss and political leader? It's not because they were negative day in and day out, is it? It's almost certainly because they conveyed what was possible, made things happen, and perhaps helped you to become a better or more successful version of yourself. Here's another question for you. How do you perceive the average person you know? Do you think they're generally positive people, negative people, or somewhere in between? How many people do you know who you view as 'positive people'? They tend to be rare, right? That's why you'll hear people occasionally say so-and-is such a positive person...because they tend to be a rarity. And here's why all of these dynamics exist. First of all, most people are mostly positive people...believe it or not. Medical research has shown that, without prompting, the average person will spend 52% of the time on positive thoughts, with 34% of the time spent on negative thoughts and 14% that are neutral/ambivalent. That's not necessarily great; naturally spending over a third of one's time focusing on negativity isn't the healthiest or best thing to be doing...but still, the average person is mostly positive if left to their own thoughts. But why then is there so much negativity in society? The reason is that the typical person is far more responsive to negativity than they are to positivity. Research has also shown that negativity carries 1.5 to 2 times the psychological impact of positivity typically. This is why, all other things created equally, our minds tend to skew towards the negative. The easy illustration of the dynamic is this... How often are you asked about your day, or what's going on, by someone in a real conversation (not passing hallway behavior where someone is being polite but doesn't actually care to hear an answer) and all of the positive thoughts that might have crossed your mind come out as opposed to whatever it is that you recall that's gone wrong in your day or within your mind? And the reason that this is on my mind today is a combination of the homestretch we're heading down in this political season, combined with the issues that are in play, but also what's at stake on the issues of the day.
Takeaway #2: You're being played
False reporting and fake news is nothing new. Politicians using smear campaigns to try to win elections is nothing new. But what is new is the historic moment in time that we're in and the extent to which from all angles you're being played. Think about the news flow day in and day out. We're losing the Iran war (this isn't true). AI will kill you (this isn't true). Amendment 3 would prevent local governments from providing vital services (this isn't true). Data centers will poison your water and run up your power bill (this isn't true). I could keep going but you get the idea. But the reason you're conditioned daily with negativity on those issues and others is to attempt to get you to make decisions that serve somebody else's interests. On the other end of each of those examples is someone seeking to propagandize you with negativity to act against your best interest. For example, regarding the Iran war who benefits from the negativity? Democrats. Who benefits from convincing you that AI will kill you? The AI companies (if they get the regulation they want). Who benefits by convincing you that Amendment 3 is a bad thing? Those who work in government/public sector unions. Who benefits from convincing you that data centers and related AI infrastructure will harm you? China. I'll point something out here for a moment. How can you expect to benefit from making decisions that serve the interests of the Democrat Party, AI companies, public sector unions and China? Why would you want to be personally aligned with that? Yet what I've found commonly in this election cycle, is that those who've made good decisions at polls that have served their interests leading to the election of President Trump and those who've helped Florida into the state with a top performing economy, a top education system, and into one of the safest states – have increasingly fallen into the negativity trap on at least some of these issues. Don't do it.
Takeaway #3: The reality
As I shared with you on Monday – we're winning the Iran war. President Trump miscalculated the ideological dynamics at the beginning of the war, but his subsequent plan is working and he's going to be able to land this plane. As I mentioned on Monday the initial spike in oil prices to Trump rejected Iran's wish to go back to the MOU, they broke the terms of in July was a miserection. That proved to be almost immediately true. Iran is on the brink of financial collapse, and Trump will see to it that we win this thing. Interestingly yesterday there an increasing number of optimists in this regard as oil export numbers from analytics company Kpler showed that oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz are now back to about half of where they were before the war and trending higher. On the matter of AI, it's not going to kill you, but rather it's already providing remarkable productivity enhancements for you, creating more job opportunities for you (which it has already done), create greater economic growth (which it has already done), generate greater investment returns benefiting all types of investment accounts including pensions and 401ks (which it has already done) - among whatever other things you'd like for it to do for you. As for Amendment 3, it would simply take less money away from you annually to maintain a roof over your head and pressure local governments to exercise fiscal restraint. Again, average local government spending has grown by about 150% in excess of population and inflation adjusted metrics this century, and the average local government could operate on a fully adjusted basis just as they did in 2019. Why is it too much to ask local governments to operate as efficiently as they did in 2019? As for data centers, cameras, and related infrastructure – we could have tens of thousands of new jobs, new power infrastructure paid for by the companies, replace the entire homesteaded property tax base with property taxes derived from the data centers, and attract other AI-related companies and technologies into our state and into our communities to have Florida continue to lead into the future. These are all choices. And many of them are represented in various elections on our ballots. As we're now under five weeks away from Election Day, all of those issues among others are in play. Real leaders lead on the tough issues, doing the right thing to win in the end. These are the positive people that stand out to you in life. Florida has come too far as a state to start going the other way. Our country, under President Trump is on the right path too. Polls don't say those things. Politicians (other than Trump) won't say those things. But when you have conversations with others, what type of person do you want to be? And when you go to vote, who's interests do you want to serve?