We all know the story.
It used to be, if you wanted to prove yourself, you had to get the right degree, climb the corporate ladder, or be backed by the right organisation. You'd have to think about how to do things in a way that works for the gatekeepers and established institutions, just as much as it works for you. Your success was determined by your ability to get by in the established order.
But over the last few decades, public trust in even the basic concept of a 'Gatekeeping Institution' has gradually been falling apart. So their approval and endorsement is much less of a marker of prestige and legitimacy as it once was. But this can be an opportunity.
I’m calling it “The Dissolution of the Monopolies”
In the more distant past, institutions were restrained by the limits technology. When all written communication was on paper, all labour was performed by humans or animals, and all teaching was done face-to-face, the size and type of organisation that could be built had natural constraints that prevented it from becoming too complex and too powerful to complete with.
As a result of this, organisational bodies that we often think of (anachronistically) as large and monolithic were usually organised more like networks of semi-autonomous nodes, each serving as a local hub of influence, service, protection, and resource.
Some examples:
The mercantile city states of the Mediterranean that are now gathered into larger nation states.
Feudal systems of taxation that required individual vassals to have authority over their patch of land.
Militaries that were occasionally gathered from smaller local militias, orders of knights, and mercenaries.
The scholarship and charity of medieval monasteries that were scattered across the European continent.
In these types of organisations, security, business, and status relied on trust between peers. Trust which can only extend so far because it is built on relationships that form across multiple interactions. When you live in a close-knit community of a few hundred citizens, there's a very high likelihood you are going to bump into the same people multiple times as you go about your life. This means relationships of trust are a natural and expected consequence of life in a society that is limited to this scale.
But over the last few centuries we have moved away from living in close-knit, semi-autonomous, high-trust societies. Instead, technology has allowed a few organisations and institutions to scale up and consolidate power into globalised bureaucratic systems. These organisations run on procedures which at the human scale we call jobs.
Initially, we welcomed these changes because they brought obvious immediate benefits: increased efficiency, opportunities for growth, convenience and reliability. We trusted banks, universities, and governments because it meant we could have fruitful interactions without having to first build trusting relationships with individuals. This meant there was a clear path to success that could be attained without the help or support of others. Get a good degree in a good university, get a good career in a good company, vote for a good leader in a good government.
Over time these large-scale institutions became the backbone of our society. But for these institutions to actually be good, they must be underpinned by systems that unfortunately work much better at small scales. Qualifying credentials, chains of command, democratic voting, and free trade all work at their best in the kind of high-trust, close-knit societies we moved away from as these institutions increased in scale.
By removing the need for trust from the system, large scale institutions cut their legs out from underneath themselves. When you’re the only place anyone can go to for legitimate access to information, qualifications, money, travel, and defence, you need a baseline of trust in the culture because you need people to trust you. But mistrust in day-to-day dealings with others eventually proliferates into general distrust across the board.
I’m Ben Fleming, and if you’re a forward thinker of any kind, I want to partner with you and use my expertise in health and fitness to help you become the person you want to be so you can build the future you want to see. You and I can build a better world for everyone forever together. Let me know what you’re working on!
We no longer trust in institutions.
We no longer trust in our communities.
We no longer trust in each other.
We live in a trustless world.
So how do we find success?
We’re beginning to see the shift back from centralised monopolies to distributed systems. Large-scale institutions were only able to achieve their dominance because they had the ability to command capital, equipment, and communications at a large scale. And the only certain route to success was to align ourselves with these powerful bureaucratic entities, acting according to their patterns.
But as technology has become increasingly cheap and accessible, incumbent institutions have lost their technological edge. Individuals like you can now benefit from economies of scale and compete with larger entities without needing to either get involved in heavy industry and financial risk or aligning to the vague purposes of a nameless, faceless corporation. The advantages that once unfairly empowered centralised authorities now empower you.
In low trust societies, we regain trust by going back to building one-to-one relationships and close-knit communities from the ground up.
At The Network State Conference 2024, famous investor Naval Ravikant captured this perfectly:
"It’s how humans normally work. If you go to a friend's event or party and you bring someone who's boorish or trouble you're not gonna get re-invited. There's some accountability.
The systems that we're using for these large governments now - for these oversized, bloated governments - they require trust but they don't have trust... So then you have brutal top down enforcement. There's one healthcare system for everybody. There's a police system which is kind of random and treats everybody as a criminal up to a point.
So you need to have trust. And so the nice thing about the internet is you can actually create trust based on accountability. You can do it based on who invited whom. Who's got what reputation and what rights... And I think this opt in voluntary system enabled by the internet is very powerful"
Social Role Valorisation (SRV) is a concept developed by the psychologist Wolf Wolfensberger. It’s rooted in the disability rights movement and is about addressing the way people with disabilities are often devalued in society. The basic idea is that the best way for marginalised or devalued social groups to be treated with respect in society is to give them opportunity to do things that society values.
When individuals are seen doing good work in a valued role, they gain in social status and a disability that would have otherwise defined them is disregarded in favour of the role they play in society. This was initially applied in areas like mental health and elderly care but it has implications for anyone who wants to succeed in the world.
Society used to value roles that were handed out by institutions. A doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or a priest, working for a prestigious company or having a degree from a well known university, being a member of the military or the government or the judicial system. This all used to automatically inspire reverence but today we disregard these roles. We don’t respect people just because they have the weight of trusted institutions behind them.
But new technologies allow us to create our own socially respected roles.
In financial systems, trust is established through banks. When one person wants to transfer a certain amount of money to someone else, to make sure the exact same amount of money leaves one person's account and arrives in the other, banks act as a trusted third party that keeps accurate records and validates the transaction. This works because both sides of the transaction trust the bank, even if they don't trust each other.
In cryptocurrency, there is no trusted third party to track and validate the transaction. When the two sides need to establish trust, they look instead to a public record that everyone can see and double check. To make sure that this record cannot be altered, a mathematical puzzle requiring large amounts of computational power is set. When this puzzle is solved the transactions are added to the public digital record in an unalterable way, verifying the transactions with computation and mathematics based in physics instead of the promises of an institution.
This process is called Proof of Work. Using publicly visible effort to prove the validity and legitimacy of a transaction. If someone wanted to undo what has already been recorded, they would have to go back and update all the previous records, requiring so much work that it it is easier and more cost effective to accept the record as it is.
In the modern world, the same concept can be applied to ourselves.
You can just do things. You don’t need a trusted third party to give you approval or permission. You don’t need a university to say you’re intelligent. You don’t need a corporate title to show you’re competent. You don’t need a government to make a difference in the world. You can create a body of work that speaks for itself.
When you build projects in public, putting in the effort where everyone can see, your work can be verified based on the evidence of what has been done instead of the promises of an institution. If someone wants to question your capabilities, you can simply go back and show them all of your previous work.
Write a book, launch a business, start a family, learn a skill, document your journey, and get in front of real people so they can see what you have done.
The best and clearest example of this with the lowest barrier to entry is a fit, muscular body.
If you have a lean and muscular physique, people don’t need to know your entire workout regime or watch you lift weights. The end result is proof that you did the work. When people see the final product they will know instantly that a lot of meaningful work went into it, proving your ability, effort, and quality.
And not only that, you also prove it to yourself. You take that body everywhere you go as a constant reminder of your own capabilities. This reality, properly understood, then proliferates into every project you take on, helping you to face the difficulties that come with all meaningful work.
It’s no longer about where you came from. Your value is now defined by your actions, your effort, and your results. It’s about your ability to create the outcomes you desire.
Relationships of trust are no longer a natural and expected consequence of life in a society. We no longer expect credentials, titles, and heritage to necessarily translate to actual useful productive output. So we prove our worth and earn the trust of others by building in public.
Smart, hardworking people that have the talent and drive to put in the work just need to know what work to do and who to do it in front of. When you know this and actually put the work in, you will find success even in a low trust society.
What projects are you building in public?
Comment below or send me a message.
My handle is @GymnasiOnUK on Youtube, Twitter, Substack, and Instagram.
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