I have friends who know nothing of my work life. When they find out I have a social media following of a sort, they ask why do people follow you? It is an interesting question. My best guess is that I really have a holistic approach to the world, and I do think everything is connected, even if those connections are not always easy to see. And then I do my best to explain these connections as simply as possible.
These days, in the chaos of the modern world, it is often hard to feel like there is any rhyme or reason to life. I suspect for some people, they feel like things just keep happening to them that are not supposed to happen. Or in other words, they feel like they have done everything right - but are not as successful as they think they should be. When I hear this, and when I look around, I see the same theme. Deinstitutionalisation. An ugly word for a simple idea.
I am going to try and talk through the idea of deinstitutionalisation, so hopefully you can understand where I am coming from - and I am also hoping that as I explain this to you I can more fully understand the concept and implications, and go make some money from it (I am very practical man - I don’t need fame, but money helps make life easier).
WHERE WE STARTED
In simple terms, we started with a feudal society. Peasants farmed the land, earned enough to survive, and paid taxes to their lords, and tithes to their church, as these were the two organisations that took care of security, and social welfare respectively. And this system was broadly in place for a thousand years.
The industrial revolution upended this system as it concentrated wealth in cities, and moved peasants from working for landed gentry to factory owners and inventors. This placed huge strain on the political systems, and led to the French Revolution, Meiji Restoration and a plethora of other revolutions, which were all about overturning the old social order. The revolutions removed landed gentry from power, and replaced them with industrialists and financiers.
WHERE WE WENT NEXT
The industrial revolution also changed that ultimate form of politics, war. War went from who had the most manpower to which nation could produce the most output, would be the ultimate winner. The Japanese, with the Meiji Restoration, and industrialists in charge, were able to conquer large parts of China in 1900s, an outcome that would have seemed ludicrous in the 1800s. You could almost argue that War was necessary partner to the industrial world to offset the naturally deflationary tendencies of industrialisation.
Mass war required mass production, which in turn required mass mobilisation . And so nations, needed to form institutions to organise mass output. This required mass education (compulsory schooling), mass labour (unions) and mass communications (government broadcasters). In fact success in life from the 1940s onwards was driven by joining a large institution and rising to the top.
What this meant, especially lets say from 1940s to 2000s, is that people generally judged you my your institutional association. You are a judge? You must be wise and successful. You work for Goldman Sachs, you must know about finance. You were a government minister? You must be a great person. You are a doctor at a hospital? You must know about health. Another way to think about this, is that information was siloed, so if someone worked in an institution with access to that information, they must be better informed than you - and hence you should be deferential to them.
This “institutionalisation” of society, meant that success was driven my entry into an institution. We still see remnants of this today. Why do people work so hard to get into an Ivy College - because it grants you institutional access. And having access to an institution was the only way to get things done. Despite the wide and varying quality of UK Prime Ministers over the years, since MacMillan, only Major and Brown were not graduates of Oxford (yes even Truss went to Oxford).
WHERE WE ARE TODAY
But from 2010 onwards, I would say society has steadily but surely deinstitutionalised. Now some people will read this as society is falling apart - this is NOT what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that access to large institutions are no longer necessary for success. The availability of information, and the ability to directly access people have destroyed the need for most legacy institutions. Do you really need to go to Oxford to learn about the most cutting edge ideas? Maybe. More likely there is an online forum that will be just as good somewhere.
I see this theme of deinstitutionalisation over many different fields, but often they are different from field to field.
Finance
There was a time when you needed to be in a big institution, not only for the credibility, but for the sales and distribution. Merrill Lynch brokers were the thundering herd, for their ability to drive clients to products. Fund managers needed access to analysts to tell them about new companies and prospects. All of this has been deinstitutionalised. Online forums can drive stocks, fund managers can reach clients directly, and star fund managers can operate on the back of their own name, not an institution.
Military
War in Iran and Ukraine has shown that clever individuals and smart strategy can thwart the institutional might of both the Russian and American military . We have even seen the rise of distributed intelligence, where amateurs study publicly available intelligence to to comment on military matters. In Ukraine, we have seen commanders stream combat action and gain social media following. We are a long way from the shroud of secrecy that covered all military activity in the past.
Politics
The legacy idea of political parties is largely being destroyed by the rise of social media. Why join a party when you can directly connect with a leader? And why create a manifesto, when you can float a political idea on social media and gauge the positive or negative reaction in real time?
Judicial Matters
You would have to be wilfully blind not to see how the power of social media can overwhelm the judicial institutions. Whether this is good or bad, will depend on context and your political leanings. Controlling a social media narrative is probably more important than the evidence that can or cannot be presented in court. In some cases, this undoubted righted a wrong, and in others, created an injustice. But it is hard not to see how judicial institutions have been challenged by the social media.
Health
The ability to self diagnose will greatly reduce the prestige of the health care sector. This in turn, will lead the health sector to be profit driven, and broader questioning of all features of public health. Something that is very clear in the US.
Employment
This has been apparent to me for a long time. Institutional reputation is no longer enough to guarantee success. Success is now individual driven. People care far more about your social media profile than your CV - at least in my experiences.
When I hear the word “viral” what I hear is that an individual has managed to bypass traditional media institutions to achieve success. And now with Twitter, Substack, Instagram, we can directly contact the individuals without need for a institutional middleman.
The positive part of this transformation is that anyone can now be successful - without the need to go to the right school, or know the right people. They just need to be clever. The negative part of this transformation is that people who have followed the institutional pathway are finding that job opportunities are not offered to them in the same way. That is “professional” jobs are seeing stagnating wages, while more manual jobs that are not tied to any institutional access continue to do well.
One feature of this “deinstitutionalisation” is that people that would otherwise be deemed untouchable in the institutional age, thrive. Most of the current White House cabinet probably fall into this category as do most “populist” political leaders. Elon Musk is very different in his attitude and demeanour than Bill Gates.
What is important to understand is that this “deinstitutionalisation” is not driven my political currents - but by technology. By moving information out of siloes, institutions lose their natural advantage. In other words, this is a structural change, that will not be reversed.
WHAT DOES THIS FUTURE LOOK LIKE THEN?
The US is by far the most advanced in this deinstitutionalisation process, and so offers the most likely outcome. And the Republican party is probably closest to a deinstitutionalisation party. Below, I best sum up the political logic as I see it.
If government is not the driver of mass organisation, then corporates must be the driver. If corporates are the driver, then governments should do their best to allow them the most leeway possible - deregulation and no tax. If corporates are not to be taxed, then to pay for essential government activities (mainly military in this case) then tax revenues should come from workers (who will benefit from strong corporate hiring anyway) and foreigners (tariffs - although workers also pay tariffs).
There are some extremely frustration aspects to this deinstitutionalisation of society. Extremely social media popularity seems to offer almost total immunity. Large parts of crypto are indeed fraudulent, but remain popular and hence relevant. The need to drive social media following drives people to commit to actions or opinions they would not normally hold, purely to drive interactions.
The problem with looking at the negative issues of the deinstitutionalisation of society is that ultimately you are saying that society has a choice. It does not. Society is reacting to technological change, and that is change that cannot be reversed. And despite some conspicuous counter examples, it drives power and prestige to those with the most natural ability - and away from those that have some how mastered institutional politics.
CONCLUSION
The deinstitutionalisation of society is unavoidable, so no point trying to make a judgement call about it. But it does make building a social media profile imperative for all people. If you are not visible in the public space of the internet, then generally speaking most people will assume you have nothing interesting to contribute. Institutional reputation is now largely irrelevant.
The big question, and the one I most worry about, is that the deinstitutionalisation of society naturally places more power with the rich and influential. Will this naturally blunt the inherently democratic nature of the mass communication involved with social media? Or will only those capitalists that move with mass opinion be the ones that can survive and prosper? On this, I do not have a conclusive opinion. But all I can say, is for the young and up and coming, building a social media profile is vital. You can no longer rely on an institution to bring you fame and a success - you need to go out and get it.
