Our agency is collapsing. I recently read the Federalist papers. What struck me most was the impression that the founders viewed government simply as a problem to be solved. We view the Constitution as second only to God's word handed down on stone tablets, but it was just a bunch of guys getting together thinking through the potential implications of different systems. I'm reminded of the part of Zero to One that talks about how we used to imagine large scale projects (e.g. filling in the SF Bay, for better or worse), but today we barely can get 2 miles of subway built in NYC.

Somewhere along the way we fell into stasis. We have a bunch of a problems in society and in the world. They need to be solved. These days the only two dynamic areas are philanthropy and startups. Almost everything else - US federal, state, and local government, large legacy businesses, small businesses, the UN, the EU, NGOs - are stagnant.