The Institutional Scramble

How unsound money keeps recreating the same institutions

Many of the problems we see today—wars, politics, the media, and even our daily lives—I believe can be explained through the lens of centralized power and unsound money. Institutions built on top of an unsound monetary system don't remain neutral forever. Over time, they adapt to incentives that are no longer driven primarily by the market, but by government through inflation, taxation, bailouts, subsidies, government contracts, and political favors. Eventually, the institution transforms into something altogether different from what it was originally created to be because it no longer has to meet the demands of the market, but instead derives its resources through government.

The Pattern I Started Noticing

As a state employee working at the university doing my usual software development job, I've watched a number of changes over the years. Around 2014, I started seeing DEI initiatives become increasingly important, shifting the focus away from merit-based performance reviews. Then came COVID, work-from-home mandates, mRNA vaccine requirements, and later the social and political pressures surrounding movements like BLM.

Who is making these decisions?

The more I looked, the stranger it seemed. As an ordinary employee, I had almost no visibility into how many of these decisions were actually made. They simply appeared. New policies. New priorities. New mandatory training. New expectations. Somewhere, someone had decided these things were now institutional policy, yet there was almost no way for the average employee to understand how those decisions were reached, who influenced them, or whether the people making them were themselves acting independently.

It got me thinking: what exactly is an institution?

When I look around the world—whether it's governments, universities, corporations, churches, or media organizations—I keep seeing the same pattern. These organizations are overwhelmingly hierarchical. Decisions flow from the top down, while information rarely flows in the opposite direction. Employees are expected to implement decisions, not question how they were made.

Other than quitting, there often isn't much of a mechanism for ordinary employees to provide a meaningful check on leadership. If those at the top become captured, compromised, or simply disconnected from the institution's original mission, what mechanism exists to correct it?

I think that's exactly the problem our Founding Fathers were trying to solve.

The debate over whether Trump was compromised by Russia is a good example. If that had been true, it would have been a terrifying prospect—as it should be for any president. But the question that interests me even more is:

> Why does the executive branch wield so much power that the entire country feels vulnerable if one person becomes compromised?

To me, that's the deeper issue.

The problem isn't just whether one person can become corrupted. It's whether we've built institutions that have become so centralized that everyone else is forced to trust decisions they have little ability to see, question, or influence.

Why Religion Caught My Attention

Lately, though, I've noticed something else.

When I look at the world today, I see a tremendous amount of fear. First it was COVID. Then BLM. Now it's the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and growing instability elsewhere. People are scared, confused, and searching for meaning.

One place many people seem to be turning is religion.

What I think I'm watching is a renewed interest in Christianity. People are trying to make sense of the world through something larger than politics. At the same time, I also think I'm seeing religious institutions increasingly compete for influence online. Christian voices, Muslim voices, Zionist voices—they're all competing to explain the chaos.

Whether I'm right or wrong isn't really the point.

The part I think matters most is this: any religious institution that depends heavily on outside money rather than the people in its own community will always be vulnerable to outside influence. Whoever controls the purse strings will inevitably have influence over the institution's direction. I don't think churches are somehow exempt from the same evolutionary pressures that affect governments, universities, corporations, or media organizations.

What I Think Is Driving All of This

I think the reason our institutions are so easily corrupted is because of our monetary system. Our education system is designed to help serve the very institutions that are causing the problem. We are taught from a very young age that things like racism, capitalism, or whichever political party happens to be in power is the problem. What it almost never teaches is Austrian economics and its argument that unsound money eventually corrupts every institution built on top of it.

The thing about governments and centralized power is that they don't just referee the game—they rig the incentives. They manipulate supply and demand, pick winners and losers, print money, hand out subsidies, award contracts, and bail out whoever they decide is "too big to fail." Before long, the easiest way to get rich isn't by building something people want. It's by figuring out how to game the system.

Just look at Washington, D.C.

If capitalism is all about markets, then why is so much money flowing toward the people closest to political power? Why are lobbyists, consultants, bureaucrats, defense contractors, and NGOs making fortunes while the people actually producing goods and services get squeezed?

My Prediction

If my broader theory is right, this is exactly what I would expect to see.

Society is rapidly shifting toward Christianity.

Look at some of the largest voices in alternative media today: Tucker Carlson, Sean Ryan, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, Patrick Bet-David, Lex Fridman, Chris Williamson, and Candace Owens.

I think the plan is to run the Christian project again. I think the West is already seeing it, and those podcasters are being used to help make that reality happen. Many of them aren't "Christian podcasters," yet religion has become an increasingly common lens through which they discuss current events. Whether they're talking about the Middle East, Ukraine, artificial intelligence, declining institutions, or Western civilization, biblical themes seem to come up again and again.

Why This Matters

Whether I'm right or completely wrong isn't really the point.

The point is that we've been taught to think about politics almost entirely in terms of personalities. Every election, we're told that replacing the people at the top will fix the problem. But if institutions really do evolve according to the incentives they're given, then changing the people without changing the incentives simply recreates the same problems in a different form.

That's why I think Austrian economics matters. It shifts the conversation away from who is in power and toward what incentives power itself creates. If those incentives remain unchanged, then I suspect our institutions will continue evolving in the same direction—regardless of which party wins the next election or who happens to be running them.