When an institution fails, nobody seems to have seen it coming. The collapse of the Soviet Union came as a shock even to the Soviet dissidents.

Why exactly are we always caught off guard? Because we have a poor understanding of institutions:

https://samoburja.com/institutional-failure-as-surprise/

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Institutions are full of automated systems—bureaucratic procedures—which dominate outward institutional appearance. More often than not, these systems persist far longer than their designers do. Focusing on them obscures the true, underlying sources of institutional health.

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Moreover, institutions often lean on outside institutions. That a bank branch is able to pay a utility to keep its lights on tells us nothing about the bank’s own functionality; we should generalize this observation to a broad range of core features that may be outsourced.

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In addition to outward trappings, proceduralized institutions cut against diagnosis from within.

Bureaucracy incentivizes people to follow scripts; it does not reward questioning them. Over time knowledge of the principles on which the scripts were built fades.

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With all this in mind, there is a good rule of thumb we can use: fighting institutions do not fail.

Organizations engaged in conflict are surprisingly likely to be healthy, because surviving attacks requires some degree of health—there must be someone repairing the damage.

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Two questions:

First, how real is the conflict? Cartels and rubber-stamp parliaments often disguise their coordination with performative conflict.

Second, how big is the besieged institution? Large institutions can absorb attacks and resort to automated defense mechanisms

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One of the myriad ways through which institutional prestige far outlives institutional health. Through this analysis we can begin to see why—and maybe even predict the next Soviet collapse.

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To really apply this beyond a particular institutions, to society as a whole, I recommend taking a look at Great Founder Theory.

https://twitter.com/SamoBurja/status/1322225349766324225

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