Have You Considered Just Building a Better World?

 

If you haven't been paying attention to Balaji, you should start. There are very few voices in the world today that have the vision to see where we are headed, the wisdom to cherish and remind us of all of the costly lessons of our past, as well as the capacity and courage to articulate the truth about the situation we are in. He just posted this incredible article entitled Founding vs Inheriting in which he compares and contrasts the overwhelming difference there is from leaders who call things into existence versus the managers that inherit systems that they would never have been able to build in the first place. He highlights the obvious differences, for example, of the majority of elected officials in the US and the founding fathers that designed the project to begin with. He writes “The banks that they bail out are too big to fail, and the shoes they inherit are too big to fill.”

Balaji uses the example of the partially bilingual children of immigrants that understand their parents when they speak the language, but cannot speak or write it themselves. He points out that these children do not have the tools necessary to carry their culture into the future. They are, much like the leaders who have inherited the driver seats of out legacy institutions, a “read-only culture.” It is not enough to just be able to use what another has built. We need builders. Builders who can innovate and lead and create and adapt. In America, he points out, there was a kind of coastal division between the inherited institutions and inherited wealth on the East coast and the founders that took the west coast by storm as tech CEO’s decided that they would transform the world we inhabit. “Where heirs failed, founders succeeded. The internet stayed up. The state couldn’t deliver checks, but Amazon could deliver packages.” Although the challenges that are so deeply imbedded within inherited systems, like education, healthcare, policing, and managing a pandemic are not things that are within the reach of most start-ups. You actually need to be the President, the Governor, or Mayor to have access to the wheel. The whole article leads to  this central question: “how do we go about founding alternatives to the ultimate inherited cities and states.”

This question resonates deeply as a founder that has been actively working to envision and even establish an alternative city, a WellBuilt City, in the midst of our city. I’ve been puzzling over the idea of The Network State that Balaji recently published about and I am so grateful to hear others working to envision alternatives. (If you haven't read it, you should.) For now I just want to reflect on the essay at hand and the contrasting competencies it illustrates. 

I fully agree with the essay about the vast differences between founders and those who have inherited systems which they wouldn’t have had the competency to build. I do, however, also think it is important to highlight the role of diversity, not just in the way we normally discuss it, but the kind of diversity we find in our own families that are often economically or racially homogenous. The temperamental attributes that differentiate us so much from one another are a deep kind of diversity that is often overlooked. There are deep personalities and traits that make some of us managers and others makers. The maker, or in the context of this essay, the founder, is open and creative, enthusiastic, and comfortable with risk taking. The Manager is almost the opposite in many ways. Driven by a deep desire for stability and order, they almost seem destined to follow founders and inherit companies, currencies, or countries. I also think that, in a time of systemic decline, institutional entropy, and irrelevance, we desperately need founders and creative leaders who are driven to build the world we all dream of. I am personally possessed by such a dream and intend to spend the rest of my life working to build alternatives to the current and unacceptable systems we have inherited. I will also say that I absolutely need the manager types around me. Part of being this way (creative, driven, future oriented, risk-taking) is that I am also often dis-organized, forgetful, preoccupied, and sometimes a bit insensitive. I have been so grateful for the teams and partners that have joined me in my endeavors as they bring so much value to the whole. Don’t get me wrong, those people usually drive me nuts as they slow things down, make objections, and need to put everything into spreadsheets but where would we be without them? We need them, but Balaji is right, they should not be in the driver's seat anymore. They had a good run back in the day but that world is over, even if it’s artifacts linger. Now we must roll up our sleeves and build from scratch. If you read this, or Balaji’s article, and recognize that you have the stomach of a founder, then consider this your calling. The world needs you to step up and build a path into our future.