It's Time to Build Institutions

amirbolous.com

28 points·amirGi··7 comments

Yes! But also: making existing institutions better is almost certainly going to provide better cultural ROI that starting new ones. Part of what makes institutions institutions is that they _endure_. Look around your local culture and find an institution that could be doing a great job, but isn’t: that’s the leverage point.

One of the problems is looking at institutions in terms if ROI. They have value in and of themselves.

I guess we both favor preferring existing institutions, so I’m disagreeing with your conclusion.

But there’s a word for favoring existing institutions: “conservativism.” Not many people on this board like that word.

"Cultural upcycling" has a nice ring to it.

“Hacking modernity?”

Obama on 4/7/22 re: Ukraine:"WE FORGOT THE POST-WW2 60-YEAR STRETCH IS THE ANOMALY. There is millennia of brutality. We created institutions out of 60 million people dying. They are not self-executing. They are something we have to continually nurture and respond to." https://youtu.be/V4bDuFJuriw?t=525

Devils advocate: if "Making institutions" means "making foundations", this also means a rather inefficient way of using money. Foundations are conceptually built with a capital stock which must never decrease, so they are typically allowed to only operate with the capital gains/interest rates. In effect, this allows them to move much slowlier, because they are way less solvent then they could be, if their capital stock was available to do business.

I find it really annoying how, for lack of a better word, lame things like freemasons be and Shriners have become.

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