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: 7. a pe! re > = TS = faye? ys He oH =a Wee al I dl MN, PO A ih ; N. jee W As people become more polarized on both sides of the aisle, politicians are incentivized to take increasingly extreme positions. In the past, if you didn't like the way a government agency was operating, you'd run on a platform of fixing it. Today, we're seeing more people get elected on the promise of abandoning institutions and norms outright. When your government leaders are the ones telling you not to trust government, who are you supposed to believe? This creates a compounding effect where people lose confidence in government, elect politicians who share their distrust, and then become even more disillusioned as their leaders tell them how bad the institutions they now run are. This is usually where I'd lay out my ideas for how we fix the problem. The truth is, I don't have the answers. I plan to keep seeking out and reading others' ideas, especially from young people. I'm hopeful that the generations who grew up online will have fresh ideas about how to tackle a problem that is so deeply rooted in the internet. This problem requires more than just innovation to solve, although there are some steps we can take (especially around e-governance and making data more available to the public) to make modest improvements. There are all sorts of ways that great scientific ideas get published and tested. For great political ideas, the pathways are not as clear. Thinktanks and academics can point in the right direction, but at the end of the day--in a democracy at least--it seems to me like you need to pick the right leaders and give them the space to try new ideas. What we can learn about progress from the climate conversation There's a phrase we like to use at the foundation: Progress is possible, but not inevitable. Change happens because groups of people get together and decide to make things better. It might not happen as quickly as you want or need it. But if you have enough smart, thoughtful, and passionate people pushing for it, progress will eventually come. I was reminded of this at the recent COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The climate conversation is often singled out as an area stymied by disagreement. In the past, there was a lot of debate about whether we had all the tools we needed to solve this problem. Now, there's a lot more agreement that we have some of what we need, but not all of it--and that we need to prioritize closing that gap if we're going to avoid a climate disaster.