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Out of the Middle
Friday, June 22nd, 2007 by Admiral_CoeymanThere is a strong draw toward centralization in the world and I am not sure what is causing it. Stand up philosophers are observers as well as thinkers. We see long before we understand. When we think that we understand, then we are at our most ignorant. Socrates, as shown by Plato, argues against many stances without taking any position of his own.
Efficiency is maximized when a resource is closest to a need. A decentralized system is very good at handling problems as they come up. The Internet was designed to be decentralized so that there would be no single point of failure and this has been the biggest strength of the Internet. Damage to one part of the Internet does not take out any more than that part of the Internet. It works because each node of the Internet knows how to run its own affairs and does its own job very well.
Centralization always ads lag to responses. Tactical information has to reach the central authority which must then formulate a response and move resources to a problem area. This leaves out the fact that the tactical data will not be complete when it reaches the central authority. A central authority has to deal with so many types of problems that it cannot become efficient at handling even one of them. Specialization leads to skill.
At one time, computerized musical synthesizers were made up of general purpose electronic chips. These chips were individually cheap and worked well. Then, one manufacturer noticed that you could cut the cost of the instruments by using a few specialized chips. Each chip cost more, but the whole unit cost less because you used fewer of the more expensive chips. Efficiency does a job better using fewer resources.
Unless your goal is control, why would you want to champion centralization? Understanding of a problem is best at the point of the problem. Things that a centralized authority would never think of would be automatically accounted for if the response had originated closer to the problem. Beyond even this lies the fact that power is always a corrupting influence that should be minimized at all times. We do not have to understand how a system works as long as it does work.
