In the second of three talks at John Allsopp’s Web Directions Dec 2024 NEXT conference, I dig into a question modern life has taught us to overlook: how do we decide what's truly good?

We’ve built a civilisation where merit is often confused with ambition, where leadership is predicated on self-promotion, and where institutions reward ambition and playing the game (instead of service) and ‘smartness’ (instead of good judgement).

Enter what I call “bottom-up meritocracy”, as practised in medieval Venice and on modern Wikipedia, I explore how “bottom-up meritocracy” once thrived—and could again.

We’ll look at how the American Founders tried (and failed) to build a system of bottom-up meritocracy inspired by Venice's constitution (among others), how our institutions have become increasingly hollowed out, and why Charlie Munger summed it all up when he described what we should be aiming for: a “seamless web of deserved trust”.

If you prefer listening to the YouTube video, it's here: