by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-05 17:21:38+00:00
I Agree with your comment but one of the idea that terrifies me is not that change is impossible but rather change requires the whole world to do something about it and I am not that optimistic about it simply because of what you call about "elbow society"

> I think this primarily relates to how people are socialised. In Germany, we call this an 'elbow society', i.e. a society where people aggressively push their own interests and compete ruthlessly, showing little regard for cooperation, solidarity or fairness. People feel so lost in the world that they are losing their humanity, only looking out for what maximises their own outcomes. I believe this can be changed, but it will require a large-scale cultural shift driven by society, education, the media, and so on - the same institutions that pushed us in the other direction in the first place.

I so so agree with this statement, this is probably what I thought as well but one of the most terrifying things about this is that its sort of like a chicken and egg problem because the media,education and so much more are so influenced by policies/directly by the govt and the elites that I would doubt that making such change or giving people the idea that "change is possible" is itself possible

But there have been instances in the past where we pulled out of things but I am not sure how we can do it right now.

A large-scale cultural shift.

> the same institutions that pushed us in the other direction in the first place

So the thing which worries is me that I don't see a reason why these institutions would change? Do you see something in this perhaps?

I think that the best way is probably via at a small scale level and then having that grow up. Adopting it ourselves and discussing about it like we are doing right now is the only thing possible that we can do

My issue with this is that the incentives just aren't there for something like this. Let's say I want to create a social company and I just want "enough" and afterwards I'd just do it for helping etc. and getting miniscule gains because I think that the goal of money and only money itself is very dim

Even if we do something like this, the incentives really change because companies wont invest, you wont get funding etc.

So in a way, I think that the best way is probably getting attention of like minded people and having them invest with such knowledge but we really haven't seen such platforms. I think Kickstarters are a good idea for small scale projects but even they feel like you still have to get yourself a promotion or attention itself to fund it and it just becomes really 10x harder imo

I feel like microgrants are genuinely the best way moving forward. If people can provide 1-10k$/perhaps 50k? for an idea with intentions of good once it scales. To me it feels like the best way and I found ways to look at microgrants and they exist but I dont see many of them in much action either.

We really need to change incentives where doing good is favoured more than doing bad, We can even start small because sometimes even small good incentives are all one needs for real change.

I wish there was more interest in microgrants, I must admit that I had thought about working in this space or similar and perhaps I will jump back to it someday but what are your thoughts on it? Do you know of some mechanisms where good incentives can be generated at a societal rate?