I’m fascinated by choices that bifurcate your life. The choices that if you pursue them, are either incredibly rewarding or incredibly damaging. These are often choices that have an incredibly long tail of potential outcomes. We intuitively know quite a few of them:

• I want to become an Actor: You’re either incredibly rich and worshiped by millions or you’re a waitress at the cheese cake factory
• I want to start my own business: Most businesses fail and the founders are worse than if they pursued employment, or they develop strong views on inferior or superior types of caviar

These choices are in stark contrast to other professions which have a high outcome floor and a much more reasonable distribution. For example if you chose to become a doctor or programmer, you will end your career with a job in the six-figure range unless you snort coke on the operating table.

What I find even more interesting is that a new subgroup of positions are starting to join this list. The idea of joining institutions such as the Harvard, Vogue, or the Washington Post.

The Strength of Institutions

Steward Brand’s piece on Pace Layers talks about how different layers of our society operate on different time scales. With layers such as Technology and Fashion evolving almost weekly, and Governance taking decades to change. This a feature of our society, allowing us to have a new iPhone every year, but taking centuries to change our minds on what is or is not moral.

Institutions tend to be a layers of society that is incredibly slow to change. This gives them an incredible persistence and stable outcomes their employees. If you chose to work in the cell-phone industry in 2000, you would either end up incredibly rich at Apple or flat broke at Nokia. If an immortal worked at the FDA or SEC, they’ll be employed for the next 400 years at minimum.

However the longevity and strength of these institutions is not due to their inherent qualities but instead due to the underlying structure of our society. The FDA/SEC will continue to be a stable career choice, provided that the US continues to be a global superpower. Goldman Sachs will continue to create finance bros, provided that the underlying banking system doesn’t shift to the blockchain and companies continue to want to do business in New York and be listed on the NYSE.

Broken Institutions

Certain institutions are failing to keep up with changes in our society’s structure. For better or worse, the 21st century has completely transformed our underlying society due to technological innovations. There are two underlying shifts that I want to talk about here:

• Advertising: Institutions that relied on advertising are now unable to compete with Google or Facebook
• Fragmentation: Institutions that relied on being sources of authority on topics are now unable to compete with the rise of diverse voices due to internet platforms such as Twitter and Youtube.

With these changes in our societal structure it’s easy to understand which institutions are now vulnerable to our society. Institutions that rely on advertising and being the voice of authority:

• Investigative Writers : If Newspapers had a revenue of $3,000 per ad, but can now only charge $3 per ad, it’s easier to understand why institutional journalism is a dying field. Institutions can no afford to hire the same number of journalists leading to worse outcomes and fewer instigative pieces
• Taste Makers: Why would I care about what Vogue tells me about fashion if Twitter Suit guy not only tells me how to dress but also makes fun of Piers Morgan by comparing him to Kermit
• Trusted Experts: If the COVID-19 Pandemic taught us anything, it’s that trust in our institutions and trusted experts has vanished. The state of universities between the protests, plagiarism allegations, bias in textbooks have shown that they are hated by both the right and the left

Cult of Personality

It’s idiotic to say that roles such as Investigators, Taste Makers, and Trusted Experts have died out in society. They deliver incredible amount of value to our society and will be continue to be needed for decades to come. Instead, as their underlying institutions have started to break down, they need to shift away from the institutional layer of society.

These roles have now moved up a layer in our society and operate on a different pace. In this new layer, they’ve shifted from a reliance on institutions, and have instead formed a reliance on their personality. This can be best represented by two individuals: Anna Wintour and Tucker Carlson.

The value in the Vogue name is not longer due to it’s historical position as a magazine, but it is instead due to the power of Anna Wintour. Being featured in Vogue is not of much value to any new fashion designer. Very few people buy and read the magazine anymore. Instead, being introduced to, mentored, and networking with Anna Wintour is the true dream of these rising artists. The difference can be instantly seen in two situations: Would you rather be posted in a Vogue Article or would you rather have Anna Wintour discuss you at a dinner party.

The same can be said for Tucker Carlson. For a large number of people, Fox news is not what they trusted. They trusted Tucker Carlson. When Tucker Carlson left Fox News, and started to espouse his views on Twitter, millions of Americans followed him across to another platform.

Bifurcation of Institutions

This breakdown of institutions such as Academia, Journalism, and Taste Makers has lead itself to the outcomes we now see in people who chose to pursue these careers.

The likely hood of a PhD becoming a professor at a Tier 1 college has plummeted. More importantly, the reverence of these positions has also crumbled as people no longer view a Harvard professor as an automatic expert. Instead, certain professors such as Scott Galloway or Geoffrey Hinton have a rich online personality they use to be trusted in their fields. I would trust either of these two far more than I would an unknown professor from Harvard. 30 years ago, it would be insane to trust someone popular on the internet over a Ivy-league professor.

Journalists are in the business of converting attention to money. They now understand that 100 hours of work for a single newspaper article no longer makes economic sense. However, 100 hours of work for a Youtube video or a Tiktok is much more sustainable. Here’s a breakdown of NYTs (Traditional Institution) vs Morning Brew (online news platform) on Tiktok:

	New York Times	Morning Brew
Followers	635,800	929,500
Likes on Account	10,800,000	19,800,000

More interesting, you can see the cult of personality in examples of journalists such as Dan Toomey (Morning Brew Reporter) and Philip DeFranco (Internet Journalist)

	New York Times	Morning Brew	Dan Toomey	Philip DeFranco
Followers	635,800	929,500	147,300	3,100,000
Likes on Account	10,800,000	19,800,000	6,700,000	204,900,000

Any position relying on a cult of personality by definition has a long tail distribution. People who chose to work at these specific institutions are now realizing that they can no longer rely purely on the credibility afforded to them due to the underlying shifts in society. A good taste maker now has to have an online presence where they are able to argue their views to our society. It’s easy to see that the new head of Vogue won’t have a fraction of the power of Kylie Jenner to impact fashion trends.