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Comment by usrbinbash | Hacker News Reader

> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!"

First I would like to be convinced that centralization is actually a problem.

Most things in our daily lives are centralized: Power Generation and Distribution, Water Distribution, the Logistics which put food in our stores, Infrastructure setup and maintenance, to name just a few.

Yes, even our financial systems work fine. I get my paycheck on my account, I can pay effortless with my credit card, security, maintenance, services, customer service is taken care of.

Yes, there are shitty centralized systems, and there are opressive authorities that abuse centralization. The solution to that however, is not "get rid of centralized systems".

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In the abstract, centralization bad, decentralization good.

There is no deeper thought going on here than the above. These are barely thought out, quasi religious beliefs as moral justifications for get rich quick schemes and frauds.

The same conversation about nothing, ad nauseam.

My place is on well and septic. I like the setup, and the yard space for this creates limits to residential density. I'm possibly not typical.

that will probably never happen. There is always an ongoing fight between decentralization (enduser, humanistic approach) and centralization (efficient, dictorship, monopolization approach). Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority. Basically see any form of dictatorship over multiple generations. Ofcourse they can accomplish good, working systems. They can even be efficient as long as all orders are done exactly without fighting back.

decentralization is taking back some of the control back from central authorities. The problem is people often do not want to be 100% responsible for their own well being. This in turn leads to re-centralization at some point. We have governments because people often do not believe they can easily live together with complete trust. We have laws in order to make it easier for humans to live together. Essentially offloading a cognitive function of threat detection by relying on a trusted entity (government) to create a safe environment. In a dictatorship its possible for that trusted entity to transform into a bad faith actor and no longer work towards its original purpose. We introduce democracy/republicanism (a form of decentralization) in order to protect against this flaw. This form of government itself often re-centralizes in some form or another (government parties).

What I'm trying to get at is that while centralization is efficient and many things head to centralization we should still try to make the backbone decentralized whenever possible. It is a form protection against a central authority transitioning to a bad faith actor. Almost all central authorities will eventually transition to bad faith (from the end users perspective). With as much of the backbone being decentralized as possible we can at least more easily finger point and hold those central authorities responsible for their actions.

> Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority.

And de-centralization has security flaws in the form of more difficult or impossible oversight, which can allow bad-faith actors to pursue their goals with impunity.

Neither paradigm is perfect, each has its flaws. Knowing that a system is de- or centralized, tells us exactly nothing about the morals of the people using it.

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