I was not denigrating a big picture view in any way, shape, or form. I had thought I was agreeing with you, but possibly not. I had understood you to be saying that we--all of us--need to be better people in order for larger, systemic changes to succeed. The point about the Soviet Bloc collapsing only to be replaced by another state, and so forth. What have the accomplishments of Elon Musk, and Facebook, and Google done to make the world a freer place? Arguably no more than they have done to help the state corral, surveil, divide, and distract us. You yourself seem to implicitly recognize this in your original post when you say: "that voluntary sphere is rapidly losing ground to the aggressive sphere," and more explicitly in your article about community, where you recommend limiting yourself from exposure to social media and Internet activities that disconnect us from those around us.

Technology and the innovations of the market can be great, or they can be terrible. But they have no agency of their own. They're just tools, and so they depend on the wisdom and justice of those who wield them. It's like how the Constitution was once marginally effective in restraining people who believed in it and took it seriously, but utterly impotent against those who saw no moral or ethical obstacles to their designs. This is why I say it's folly to try to change the world -- not because it's impossible per se, but because we have not done the prerequisite groundwork that are required for it to be a positive change. We all want to avoid some upheaval that replaces one tyranny with another.

Take your example of Jesus Christ. He certainly changed the world, but the only acts on Earth He performed involved the people in his immediate proximity. It took centuries for the faith He inspired to spread throughout Europe, much less the rest of the planet. And if even the Son of God, who certainly had the power to do so, eschewed massive and relatively quick society change in favor of local action, I think there's a good lesson in it for all of us.