Private funding the future

This is a picture of my wife's backside and Sagrada Família, the Gaudi designed church in Barcelona, Spain. The construction was started in March 1882 which makes it 136 years ago and, it still isn't finished. That is quite a long time to build anything and in 2010, it passed its mid-point of construction with hopes to finish it in 2026 in time for the centenary of Gaudi's death. Perhaps they should have used agile methodology.

One of the reasons it has taken so long to build is that besides being interrupted by the Spanish civil war, it is privately funded. Construction on Sagrada Família is not supported by any government or official church sources. Private patrons funded the initial stages.[50] Money from tickets purchased by tourists is now used to pay for the work, and private donations are accepted through the Friends of the Sagrada Família. _source

Even though there is a lot of freedom associated, private funding comes with a great range of problems as essentially what happens is investors have a wide range of desires to satisfy and wishes to add into the project which can lead to a great deal of scope creep. If you consider the amounts required for construction per year, you can imagine that the largest investors feel they have a right to have a say.

There is of course likely many differing opinions and while some want to stay true to the original design, others might want to compromise or change it in order to better satisfy their positions. If you consider that the project has been under construction for 136 years, not only have there been many designers come and literally go, there has been generations of family investors who have been there from the inception. This means that the 'same' investor groups are not actually the same at all as a great grandchild might have a different vision than the original investor and, might not want to invest as heavily considering cultural changes.

Who would have thought that building a symbol of one of the most centralized organizations in the world could be so difficult once it became investor decentralized. Decentralization of funding, decision making, design, reward, distribution of skill, resources and all the other functions present a great many problems but, would the church have agreed to Gaudi's flamboyant and unique design if it was footing the bill, would it be a symbol of a city, a country, a culture if they had had their say, their centralized way? Even unfinished all of these years it attracts 3,000,000 visitors per year to be one of the highest traffic tourist destinations in the world.

Unique and cutting edge takes time to develop and even though those within the design phase might have a clear picture of where it could be, requiring private funding and investment for progress slows the entire process. However, what it does do is allow for a slow process of improvement where diverse groups of people focus on small parts of the whole and work out details at various levels in detail. The further the project goes, the more intertwined and connected the pieces become and even though they might have once seemed far apart, they join to build a robust network of support and possibility.

It s likely that over the lifetime of the Sagrada Família project, many, many investors came and went as they bought in and lost faith, tired of waiting, lost the resources required to take part, died or like Gaudi himself, were killed by a street car. All of them played a part in the construction though and even though none of the original and a very low percentage of those involved in the pipeline will ever see it completed, they were all valuable to the process. This includes the literally hundreds of millions of visitors over the year who paid their admission fee and only spent a few hours at best admiring an incomplete, but beautiful project.

There are not many in this world that think about starting or investing into projects that they believe they will never see the end to and likely, many of the investors into the church thought they would see its completion in their lifetime. It is a hard reality to face for some who are hoping for quick results in a project that is in its infancy, to realize that what seems so easy, is much more time consuming and complex than initially anticipated and, when the process relies on many individuals to come together, it is going to take a lot more time than if a centralized body did it itself.

One of the benefits of centralization is that they work as a proxy of many people who give up their decision making power to a much smaller group of people. This means projects can be completed much faster in many cases, whether it be government, corporation or church. However, what it means is that those small groups will make decisions based on their own wants and desires to maximize their own position, not necessarily to the benefit of the many who have entrusted them as their proxy.

It all comes down to what we want I guess. Do we want beautiful and unique or cookie cutter, do we want to be part of the process and extract meaning and purpose from our position or, be a consumer of an end product. Do we want to leave our mark on the world through our words and actions or be lost in the sea of people who have outsourced their decision making power.

Personally, I don't mind the arguments and complaints, the investors and visitors having their say and even those who get tired and leave because whether they like it or not, they are all part of the process of development. Some will see it through to the end of the project, some will not, but when it is complete, many people will be able to experience and enjoy it for years to come with only minor adjustments and maintenance required.

My wife and I got to Sagrada Família late and the line was very long. We didn't go in but sat in a little park behind the church and ate a picnic of bread and wine. I wish we had gone in though as knowing now that it is privately funded, we would have played a tiny role in its completion. A small part, but a part nonetheless.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]