Silver Linings in America’s Institutional Collapse
As the American public loses faith in institutions, the case for alternatives gains more support. They aren’t worth our trust.
This story originally appeared in my monthly Substack newsletter.
Public faith in U.S. institutions has hit an all-time low. The American populace no longer trusts large technology companies, corporations, and government arms like the police, Congress, and schools. Good — maybe these institutions have outlived our trust.
On the tech side, millions of people have flocked to alternative platforms like Substack (20M monthly subscribers), Mastodon (1.8M monthly active users), Rumble (60M a month), Discord servers (154M monthly), Medium (100M monthly users), and even OnlyFans (238M users and 3M creators). Notice a throughline: These subscription-driven platforms offer more flexibility in monetization and user-generated content, challenging incumbents like WordPress/Mailchimp, X, YouTube, Reddit, and adult websites.
Small business is one of the few institutions consistently retaining public confidence, partly because most Americans across party lines believe tech giants like Google have too much power in the market, leaving competitors at a disadvantage. Indeed, our Fortune 500-consolidated economy doesn’t respect the true free market. Industry leaders often buy out competitors long before they become a legitimate threat, effectively paying the little guy to shut up.
Silicon Valley was once rooted in originality, scrappiness, and flexibility — the hallmarks of innovation. Today, the movement has been bastardized by financialization and an investor-driven desire to maintain dominance through portfolios/ecosystems.
For example, I’d argue Apple hasn’t independently invented anything new since the early-2000s. This year’s Vision Pro launch might be an exception, but it required several under-the-radar acquisitions to pull off. Apple is one of many tech giants whose business model depends on getting consumers hooked on its signature household staples, enriching shareholders through a proven market strategy. The company spends more money on stock buybacks than research and development: From 2013 to Q1 2024, it totaled $651 billion in repurchases but just $175 billion in R&D.
Big Tech institutions deprioritize R&D and absorb competitors because they’re desperate to keep their mediocre products alive. If only we had an alternative to high-power gaming PCs running on the Windows operating system. Windows is extremely unreliable, glitchy, and full of invasive in-app advertising. No, Microsoft, I’m never interested in what you’re hocking.
Meanwhile, the law is slowly reacting to these trends, albeit too late to rescue the pre-corrupted ideals of the free market. The Department of Justice has made some big antitrust moves lately, including two lawsuits alleging that Google illegally monopolized the ad tech market and Apple monopolized the smartphone market. But can we trust the justice system to apply the law fairly and effectively? Companies always have the resources to defend themselves, no matter the case’s merits. The world’s best legal teams know which loopholes to jump through.
Companies have already adapted their short-term strategies to avoid scrutiny over megadeals. Meta, Salesforce, Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon only made four acquisitions last year, compared to 18 in 2022. Market analysts project that 2024 will bring smaller M&A transactions. As S&P Global puts it, “big is out; small is in.”
“Big business” has always been an Alpha-eat-Beta world. As I covered in my consumer choice post, market-leading companies don’t care about the consumer experience. Competition is ruthless at the top, as execs take proverbial tokes off the infinite growth model. Investors depend on that irresistible high by proxy.
An institutional power transfer is already underway in many aspects of modern life, including how we consume and understand news and events. Narratives are no longer solely filtered by cable news outlets or newspapers, which historically required editorial control for financial, legal, and even personal reasons.
Thanks to the internet, audiences now see the raw, unfiltered evidence of what’s happening throughout all institutional ladders. Firsthand footage of world events can be accessed secondhand by anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection. That’s over 90% of the U.S. population.
Since social media is designed to spread opinions, there’s always someone available to scrutinize illusions or propaganda in the 24/7 news cycle. Take the recent situation with Princess of Wales Kate Middleton, who revealed last week that she’s undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. The public had been speculating for weeks about the British Royal’s whereabouts after an abdominal surgery in January. She released a heavily Photoshopped picture in an effort to dispel rumors, which was quickly fact-checked to oblivion by anyone with an eye for inconsistency.
The mystery turned into a crowdsourced truth-seeking campaign. Mainstream news outlets issued kill notices as readers — both experts and regular people — proved the image untrustworthy. Jonathan Suart, a partner at reputational consultancy Hanbury Strategy, described this moment well in a recent Guardian article:
“People question everything now, from the time stamps on the image, to the trees in the background… I don’t know if the likes of Reuters and Associated Press would have issued ‘kill notices’ if there had not been pressure from online analysis of the image. They have to look after their brands as providers of reliable information. That is their business model.”
Middleton’s cancer explanation made perfect sense in hindsight, which is why the announcement received an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the online masses. Turns out we were right to question the manipulated photo — it was questionable for a reason. We’re getting better at calling bullshit.
Another tech-driven alternative is forming in grassroots American politics. In this month’s Super Tuesday elections, hundreds of thousands of Democrats cast “uncommitted” protest votes against the U.S.-backed war in Gaza and the growing tally of 30,000+ civilian casualties. Two days later, ceasefire protests delayed President Biden’s arrival to the State of the Union by 30 minutes. The uncommitted campaign is now spreading to other states ahead of November’s election.
Dissent against the prevailing two-party system is gaining momentum. In the centrist camp, the bipartisan “No Labels” movement picked up ballot access in 16 states. Against all odds, it’s now targeting all 50 states by the fall.
Like Big Tech, the two-party establishment scrambles to defend its dominance when threatened, often squashing the competition before it gets a chance to win votes. Last fall, Democrats launched a broad effort to end a third-party bid by starving No Labels of its cash and ballot access.
One of the two parties will inevitably win the presidency this November, as they always do. Maybe third parties are spoilers; perhaps they’re worth your support. Regardless of your stance, any challenge to centralized systems should be welcomed, especially when fewer than 2 in 10 Americans trust the federal government to do what is right. Reforms are insufficient for the average person.
In these cases and many others, it’s becoming clear that America’s institutions deserve to fail. I wonder if they will ever win back the public’s faith. Rather than reversing their poor track records, they manipulate us into excusing them while demanding unconditional support through our money (Big Tech), attention (centralized media), and confidence (politics).
Civil War isn’t what you think in 2024. It’s a quiet but raw battle for control, aligning the institutions against the consumers/civilians. It’s a prolonged trust-fall, in which one party is left hanging for decades while the other grows self-interested and forgets why they agreed to demonstrate trust in the first place.
Now’s an opportunity for ordinary Americans to create our own institutions. Ask yourself, are the old authorities worthy of your trust? How would you do things better? Critical thinking, camaraderie, and ingenuity are how the masses evolve in modern America. We can’t let the institutions drag us down with them.
The people aren’t back yet, but we’re on our way.
Note: This is an opinion essay. Much like a traditional newspaper column, my newsletter is a side channel to voice my personal views. It’s separate from my main gig as a journalist/reporter.
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Read More:
- The People v. The U.S. Dollar — Indefinite debt leaves America’s economic future in limbo.
- Starving for The Feed — Stalker-like social media algorithms will do anything to keep us engaged. Why does everything have to be relevant?
- The Next Generation’s Problem 🔒– In our rush to integrate Gen Z into the digital world, we forgot to teach them legacy tech skills. Is this an oversight or a gift in disguise?
