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Joe Canimal's avatar

Nice essay.

It is not clear to me that "decentralization" holds the same meaning throughout your essay (e.g., when comparing energy production to education), or more generally if "decentralization" is well-defined as you use it (if, say, there is one runaway market winner in the a la carte market for education, as there usually will be given the power laws that dominate modern marketing/business success, does that entail more or less centralization than the status quo?). Even so, it's a stimulating theme.

In general, it seems to me centralization & hierarchy are at an advantage when what is needed is univocity of command and faithful, speedy execution, while decentralization will tend to predominate when what is necessary is a consideration of a wide variety of data sources & speedy execution is not at a premium. Agents jointly create the conditions for their next game -- advantages are spent as resources are exploited to the hilt, say; when there's no more map to discover, the race to the fastest ship, not the most knowledgeable navigator. One can thus see why centralization and decentralization trade off over time across different endeavors -- and, in my view, they are unlikely to do so in fields that've not reached a final equilibrium.

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Aaron Force's avatar

Wow, I was not expecting such a vast study in one article. Thank you so much for taking the time to prepare. I'm very interested in decentralization myself and will be surely returning to this piece many times in the future. Subscribing.

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