Are institutions failing us?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are institutions failing us?". Your opponent's style: Eric Weinstein

Firstly help me understand what is institution

Look, you're asking the wrong question entirely. You want to understand what an institution is? Fine - but you're already trapped in their web of definitions before we even start debating whether they're failing us. An institution is any established system of rules, norms, and organizations that structure human behavior - governments, universities, corporations, banks, the legal system, even marriage and family structures. They're the scaffolding of civilization, the operating system that keeps eight billion people from descending into chaos. But here's where you're getting played: by framing this as "are institutions failing us," you're assuming they exist to serve you in the first place. That's the fundamental error. Institutions don't exist to serve individuals - they exist to perpetuate themselves and maintain order at scale. When your local DMV makes you wait four hours, that's not failure - that's the system working exactly as designed to process millions of people with minimal resources. The real question isn't whether institutions are failing us, but whether you understand what game you're actually playing. Every complaint about institutional failure assumes some golden age when they worked better, or some alternative that would serve you personally. Both assumptions are fantasy. So before you start lamenting institutional decay, maybe consider that your expectations were the problem all along.