If Centralization is a system, Decentralization is man

The system is a safety net, and the man is himself; whether good or bad.

A fire is raging inside your apartment. The only way to avoid burning to death is jumping out the window. You jump, and waiting to break your fall is a large webbed net. This net is how decentralization is viewed. It is big, safe, and no matter where you fall in it, the rest of the web will compensate. That safety and security of it is assured and appealing.

Wonder if when you leapt from the window of your burning home, there was only a thick cushion waiting for you below? It will surely save you, but only if you land on it. That condensed central object is a lot less attractive than the large net. Because, unlike with the safety net, the prospect of you smashing into the ground is very real.

How these two examples are viewed is opposite to how they are perceived in the context of decentralization and centrality. Misperceptions are why the concept of decentralization has gained momentum lately. The idea that decentralization is an interconnected web that supports itself through all its links is false. Decentralization makes its participants more autonomous, not more connected. While something that is intertwined and automatically supports itself is a system. Just think of the US$ versus crypto. The dollar has the Federal Reserve and country behind it, and a cryptocurrency only has itself.

Effects are tangibly connected with decentralization, like a ripple effect, but the reactions or responses to those effects are not. Those decentralized reactions are personal not systematic; like with the cushion. You could fall on the cushion, or it could be moved underneath you, but the only certainty is, the central cushion will feel it when you slam into it or the ground nearby. Again, whether you hit the cushion, the cushion gets moved, or you hit the ground is up to you and is not automatic. That is how decentralization works. The reactions are personal.

This is unlike centralized phenomena which act like webs. Take either the US Government or again the US$, both operate as systems. If a legal tender like the US$ fails, it not only has the government behind it, but also the incredibly valuable US economy and military too. Like the safety net, centralized systems are safer because of their interdependency of entities without it.

Europe was feudal in the Middle Ages. Feudalism is a political system defined by its decentralization. The king in those times was the judge, jury, and executioner. And every lord or baron controlled their land holdings or estates personally; like mini-kings. How tight of a grip each baron ruled with was up to the baron himself, and those lords had a great deal of autonomy in relation to their king. But the serfs that lived in the shadow of those barons and kings had minimal rights at best. That is because decentralization provides little in the way of checks and balances since its pillars operate with so much autonomy. The king and barons are those pillars in feudalism. The personal way they played out their respective roles is the hallmark of how decentralization works. There’s no systematic way to stop a mad king from acting the part. A president has no such power.

We are always at power’s mercy. Just as African-Americans were at their respective state’s mercy with school segregation in the 1950s and 60s. That was until the central system that is the Federal government intervened be enforcing laws to correct those individual state’s illegal and unethical personal preferences. However, being at something’s mercy isn’t always a bad thing. If money becomes predominantly decentralized through cryptocurrency, and the power brokers who are its major players favors you, you’d be in a great position. But conversely if you were in a decentralized economy, and the omnipotent crypto-holders were against you, then much of your existence would be an uphill battle; to say the least. As we see again with decentralization, here with crypto and before with the U.S. states, they work personally. If a crypto-king wanted to finance an army, or buy the company you work for and fire you, he could as long as there isn’t a more powerful central system stopping him. Same with the states that did not want to desegregate, they can enact their discriminatory preference until the system they are a part of overrules them.

With decentralization versus centrality, it comes down to whether it is more likely to get a bad singular entity, or a bad system, and what the consequences are of each. First, if a system is corrupt and therefore bad, it is not really a system. This is not a personal bias. If an individual part of a system’s greed or hate causes the centralized apparatus to malfunction, then personal choice is the driver and not a systematic process of decision-making. A corrupted system actually illustrates the value of a working system. The only way a system can be corrupted is by a person putting themselves ahead of it. A system respected, trusted, and/or well-designed enough is immune to that personal malice.

But there can be bad, evil systems. Some of these systems, which I am not going to state by name, were truly nightmares. For all of them to be as nasty as they were, entire communities had to make them possible. Throughout all of history and especially modern history, there have only been a few of these systems. But we all know evil is a perpetual part of humanity.

Much of the reason systems, or a central hierarchy, exist is to protect against the prospect of evil with checks and balances. Check and balances that do not exist once entities become decentralized. Any king or king-like power’s only check and balance is himself. Just like with crypto. If cryptocurrency becomes the default currency, its most dominant holders would be 21st century feudal wealth lords. It would be a banking system of operated by top crypto-holders without checks or balances. No matter your political system, you can not do much with it without an economy. Those feudal wealth lords would be the economy. If they chose to not finance the enforcement of certain laws, those laws are in effect off the books. And if with their economic power they want to enforce other ones that aren’t on the books, godspeed to whoever breaks those unwritten laws. In a decentralized economy they could use their absolute financial power to control what books are available, manufactured, or even typed if they controlled the internet as well. They could pay people to write what they want read, and finance enforcement however they saw fit. Feudal wealth lords could also finance firemen to burn books without any checks or balances.

The forced ignorance through censorship theme from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 rings true to this blog, because the advocates for decentralization don’t want you to know what it really is. It is not the safety net in which it is perceived. Decentralization is the hit or miss of the isolated cushion. Only being good, or bad, as the person jumping or moving it.