Oddbean

All centralized systems fail in the long run because they have a central point of failure. They almost always outperform self organized ones in the short term. That doesn't make decentralized systems the best systems. Different systems for different reasons. Speech and money should be decentralized. They cannot fail. There are some tradeoffs that make central systems great for certain other applications.

Military for example. Self organized armies will on most occasions fail to defeat a centraly planned one. They lack the coordination made possible by centralization. The exception is when the Central authority makes a big mistake. Decentralized systems will make less mistakes over time.

i think we get hung up on the words centralized and decentralized. because they have taken on some catchphrase elements now, theyve become over simplified. im curious about centrally planned systems versus adaptive self organizing systems. a self organizing system can create a central ‘node’ for a season because its the most efficient way to accomplish a task. but the difference is, in the adaptive system, that ‘node’ had a finite lifecycle, and is killed off before it can become a bureaucracy. where as the centrally planned system does nothing but create layers of bureaucracy which remain static, and over time suck up more and more resources. im wondering if the real root problem is that a decent portion of the population is just afraid of unpredictable change. which is why they favor the inefficient, freedom killing forms of bureaucracy. they take comfort in their predictably