<story><title>What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)</title><url>https://hackernoon.com/decentralizing-everything-never-seems-to-work-2bb0461bd168</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>One thing I don&amp;#x27;t see argued very much is that lowering barriers to entry and providing more frictionless access usually inevitably leads to &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; consolidation, not less. When there is very open access (e.g. &amp;quot;Anyone with a computer can spin up a website!&amp;quot;) it means that users will choose services that even have small improvements or advantages, until those services build up so much market share that they inevitably have huge moats to competition. I&amp;#x27;ve heard lots of comments along the lines of &amp;quot;I wish Amazon had more competition!&amp;quot;, but then those same folks will choose a service if it&amp;#x27;s 10c cheaper or if a product can arrive an hour faster.&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, if you look at businesses where there is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; huge consolidation, it is often because there is &amp;quot;market unfriendly&amp;quot; regulation. E.g. there are many rich car dealers spread throughout the US because they&amp;#x27;ve put in place so many anti-competitive regulations. While I&amp;#x27;d love it if Tesla could sell direct everywhere, it also means a lot of this wealth that currently stays relatively local would get sucked up by a Silicon Valley corporation. Same thing goes for Realtors and the real estate business.&lt;p&gt;As a consumer I love more open markets, but I don&amp;#x27;t think we&amp;#x27;ve fully addressed the consequences of how this leads to greater inequality and consolidation of services.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dredmorbius</author><text>Yes, this.  It&amp;#x27;s a realisation I&amp;#x27;ve had in the past few years and am starting to discuss myself.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a key reason why technological improvements tend to &lt;i&gt;increase&lt;/i&gt; rather than decrease inequality.  Technology, generally, appears to serve wealth and power.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not fully convinced this is a universal rule, though it seems at the very least a strong bias.  It seems to fall from the observation that &amp;quot;all machines are amplifiers&amp;quot;, which means that all machines are &lt;i&gt;force multipliers&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It may be that there are technologies which are &lt;i&gt;dissipators&lt;/i&gt; and can be used to deflect or divert attacks, though these &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; seem to favour the more heavily-capitalised party.  Shields rather than swords or range weapons, or perhaps distracting &amp;#x2F; obscuring capabilities.&lt;p&gt;What makes for &lt;i&gt;decentralised systems&lt;/i&gt; is increased frictions, whether physical, political, cultural, or social.&lt;p&gt;Where transport is expensive, materials are locally sourced, talent participates locally, government and business operate locally.&lt;p&gt;It was the factory system, mass production, transport, and advertising which allowed &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; factory or manufacturer to serve the whole world.  Mind:  specialisation means that there are probably many individual niches which can be filled, though horizontal and veritical integration may carve into this as well.</text></comment>
<story><title>What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)</title><url>https://hackernoon.com/decentralizing-everything-never-seems-to-work-2bb0461bd168</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>One thing I don&amp;#x27;t see argued very much is that lowering barriers to entry and providing more frictionless access usually inevitably leads to &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; consolidation, not less. When there is very open access (e.g. &amp;quot;Anyone with a computer can spin up a website!&amp;quot;) it means that users will choose services that even have small improvements or advantages, until those services build up so much market share that they inevitably have huge moats to competition. I&amp;#x27;ve heard lots of comments along the lines of &amp;quot;I wish Amazon had more competition!&amp;quot;, but then those same folks will choose a service if it&amp;#x27;s 10c cheaper or if a product can arrive an hour faster.&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, if you look at businesses where there is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; huge consolidation, it is often because there is &amp;quot;market unfriendly&amp;quot; regulation. E.g. there are many rich car dealers spread throughout the US because they&amp;#x27;ve put in place so many anti-competitive regulations. While I&amp;#x27;d love it if Tesla could sell direct everywhere, it also means a lot of this wealth that currently stays relatively local would get sucked up by a Silicon Valley corporation. Same thing goes for Realtors and the real estate business.&lt;p&gt;As a consumer I love more open markets, but I don&amp;#x27;t think we&amp;#x27;ve fully addressed the consequences of how this leads to greater inequality and consolidation of services.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zeroonetwothree</author><text>The car dealer model is extremely bad for consumers. It seems weird to herald it as some kind of achievement.</text></comment>