Bitcoin has highlighted the most important concept in the last few years for anyone wanting to decipher what's wrong with our institutions today.

Many CIOs and pundits talks about decentralization from "blockchain" or "The Blockchain". Those more in the know talk about scarcity and hard money or the power of PoW to solve the problems facing leaderless money protocol design.

The most consequential concept Bitcoin has birthed (by @NickSzabo4) is Social Scalability http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html

To paraphrase-- Social Scalability is the ability of an institution to overcome the limits of human minds so greater numbers (of diverse) people can participate in a common endeavor.

Anything that bumps us over Dunbar's number in can be a major benefit to humanity.

Two examples of Socially Scalable institutions are law and religion. These protocols ensure participants can't hurt each other. Decreasing mental cycles devoted to harm avoidance increases attention directed to pursuing happiness with each other.

We can look at our institutions through the lens of Social Scalability.

How do they increase who can participate?

Do they allow new types of people to partake?

Do they make us prosperous?

I think we'd find many of these answers lacking.

Incompetence and divisiveness is everywhere

We need new technology and institutions that support a larger, varied set of stakeholders' ability to engage in positive sum interactions.

It won't happen by accident. Only with passionate curiosity and cooperation