I love change. I hate passive acceptance of present conditions.
Most of the time, most present conditions are good and reasonable and don’t need a radical overthrow. And it’ always worth learning why they exist, a la Chesteron’s Fence.
But some do need to be ignored and supplanted. And I think it’s usually the complete reverse of those most people think. I think the big, giant, taken-for-granted, bedrock beliefs and assumptions are the most screwed up, and the vast majority of small, daily seemingly silly things are actually on-point.
I think the existence of elections, legislatures, governments as we know them, nearly all schooling, intellectual property, the medical industry, and other big giant accepted chunks of society are ridiculous and ripe for replacement. Then small stuff like the fact that people would rather be a YouTuber than an astronaut aren’t worrisome or worth changing. Same for consumerism, or workaholism, or most of the other popular things people think need to change. Those seem to have a pretty decent and open evolutionary market and work themselves out pretty well over time.
OK, so back to all these big changes. You can ignore some beliefs you don’t like – say some laws or informal dress codes – at various costs. Each time you ignore the status quo you will suffer, but you will also gain. Only the mold-breakers really do anything transformational, and lack of transformation stagnates into regress. So you have to pay a social price for progress. Note what this does NOT mean. This is not one of those “Have to break a few eggs.” You have to pay the social price. You can’t force other people to pay the price. If you do, you’re a government or any other less well organized gang of thugs.
Real change comes from people who see differently and act differently because of it to the point of paying a high price (and hopefully higher corresponding reward, but that’s not always the case) themselves.
But if you’re constantly challenging every aspect of everything, nothing works. For example, maybe you hate the cartelized insurance industry (I do) and you hate the current structure of incorporations (a little). You could create a company to disrupt insurance. Or a company to radically rethink corporate structure. Could they be the same company? Maybe, but probably not. Two giant status quo battles on two different fronts are really hard to win.
You can probably keep moving forward in smaller ways on many fronts – writing about your ideas, maybe advising some small startup trying it, etc. – but to go all in on a giant battle requires so much focus, so many resources, and the elimination of as many exogenous threats and liabilities as possible. The person trying to take down five things at once has too many attack surfaces and lacks sufficient concentration of upside in any one area to make up for it.
Or maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am. I’d love to upend so many big things at one time if possible.