On the flip side, Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" is a fascinating read on the benefits of decentralization.
The premise is that in the 1500s, no one thought Europe was going to be the next great power. The dominant civilizations at the time were the Chinese and the Ottomans.
Why did Europe win? Because no one could unify Europe. It was basically a collection of states.
Whereas China and the Ottoman Empire were centralized. The problem with centralization is that if the guy at the top says to do something, everyone must fall in line, even if it's a bad idea.
China used to have the most dominant navel fleet in the world. Then in the early 1500s, their government decided to stop building ships. Which ultimately led to them falling behind in the world order.
In Europe however, even if one country received a decree to stop building ships, it wouldn't stop the others from doing so. This created a hotbed of innovation and competition that allowed them to develop rapidly. And establish dominance.
The trade offs between centralization and decentralization are fascinating.
It mirrors in a lot of ways capitalism vs. communism. Or more precisely market based economies vs. command economies. The ultimate problem is that efficient distribution of resources depends on the unique conditions at thousands or millions of sites across the country. The people who are most well informed about what is needed are the people at those sites. The fundamental problem with command economies is transmitting that information up to the central source without overwhelming the system. Because it is way too much information to deal with they have to make simplifying assumptions, which lead to inefficiencies that compound over time.
The more decentralized your decision making the more efficient the system runs. However, this has drawbacks as it becomes hard or impossible to focus on big problems. On the flipside centralized systems are highly vulnerable to corruption. No system is perfect, and the most sensible systems use a combination of both.
Yep, but remember that not everything works efficiently on a market. Utilities like water and power with high barriers, at least on the distribution side, shouldn't be left to the whims of a free market. We have plenty of historical precedent where market based solutions fared poorly compared to a more command oriented approach.
You often see politicians and ideologues who insist that the market is the only solution to any problem, and these people are wrong and their solutions can lead to tragedy.
> We have plenty of historical precedent where market based solutions fared poorly compared to a more command oriented approach.
I'm not sure we do. Most parts of the world have transitioned from state owned power markets to ones that are mostly private sector driven. Even distribution infrastructure is usually quasi-privatized or owned by a collection of generator firms.
Things like pipeline networks and power cabling often seem like good candidates for command economies at first, but in practice governments struggle to spend adequately on capital infrastructure. They tend to take over the infrastructure after it's been built by private actors, then slowly run it into the ground over a period of many decades, then privatize it to try and get it off the books, then blame the private sector when it starts to break down despite their attempts to repair the damage. The left then use the parlous state of the network to argue that things were better when they were state run, ignoring that the reason they're now bad is exactly because maintenance and upgrades weren't taken seriously enough during the state run period - and often, that the private sector struggles to drain the tech-debt backlog because of government price controls.
The above is basically the experience that the UK has had over the last 150 years with water, rail and now they're adding power to the list. A big part of why the NHS is in a state of collapse, or likewise for the German railways, is because governments systematically prefer to spend money on pay rises for large workforces (=new loyal voters) than on capital infrastructure (=no new voters). Private sector network operators don't have that same problem unless they face a heavily unionized workforce, which is again often a legacy of public ownership and left wing union protection laws.
So I think it's a lot more complicated than you make out. A system that transitions between state and private ownership doesn't magically take on the properties it'd have had if that'd been the case all along.
High cost of entry doesn't mean a failed market, it just means it's not as competitive as one with a low cost of entry. There are definitely cases where barriers to entry become so high it's viewed as almost impossible to enter, but there are usually still ways to do so (e.g. buying an incumbent).
Agree regarding water and power, and really anything environmental.
As far as the market goes, I think part of the problem is that most industries are not true free markets, AKA: high competition, low barriers to entry.
Industries that are close to true free markets: restaurants, barbers, spas, handcrafted goods, almost any manner of small business.
These are some of the most ancient industries and have never collapsed or become overrun by corporations.
The issue with something like deregulating banks is that banking is not a true free market. There is no high competition (it's concentrated by a few corporations). So deregulating it can be disastrous because it's basically allowing a corporate monopoly to run wild.
If they deregulated it AND made a massive concerted effort to bring a ton of new, smaller, independent banks to the market, perhaps it could become a self-sustaining free market that truly benefits the people, with little need for government intervention.
> As far as the market goes, I think part of the problem is that most industries are not true free markets, AKA: high competition, low barriers to entry.
That sounds like the classic "if all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails".
It's true that decentralised decision making can make good use of local information. But you're ignoring the kind of problems that are created by decentralisation itself, so they can't be fixed by more of it.
A system that is being optimized with only local information is prone to getting stuck in local minima, situations which can be very far from the true optimum.
To escape from the local minima you need to gather global information compiled from the whole system, and use it to alter the decisions that individual actors would make from just their locally achievable information.
That's the role of regulation, and why regulated markets work better than chaotic ones. Regulation can make individuals coordinate to achieve larger goals than what's possible without it. And to enforce effective regulation you need some kind of authority, which is centralised.
Of course that raises the question of how that authority is created and what goals does it set; for that, we get politics, with various groups trying to influence what the authority will decree and whose interests it will pursue harder.
The original Adam Smith capitalism basically called for a nation of small businesses - ultra decentralized. Modern American industries are very far from that. Some might argue they're more like state-sponsored organizations. Which definitely wouldn't be Adam Smith's capitalism.
Book 1, chapter 7: The workers want to work as little as possible and get as high a wage as possible while the employers want the workers to work as much as possible and for as small of a wage as possible ... yet it is obvious that the employers have an upper hand in this standoff, being easier to organize since they are smaller in number, having more funds to live off of, and by the fact that they in practice enlist the state to go after workers.
I was talking about the only capitalism that has existed.
Isn't who is decentralization vs. centralization in your argument seems to be more about comparing a group of states to a single one than anything else?
Seems a bit like an apple vs. fruit basket situation.
History is complicated. The reason the Chinese stopped building (and in fact scuttled) their fleets is collective trauma after the mass genocide carried out by the Mongols. Including the decapitation of the Chinese imperial elite and the erasure and sacking of several notable cities. The reason the Mongols were able to do what no steppe people had done before was because of the centralisation of the hordes under the leadership of Temujin, otherwise known as Genghis Khan.
Let's be real, the top talent in China flocks to the tech world – internet, manufacturing, the whole shebang. Entertainment? Not so much. That industry's heavily regulated, you know? Look at what they've achieved: drones, electric vehicles, solar power, robotics... You could even say China basically "outsourced" entertainment to the West and East Asia.
As a Chinese American, this is the real reason people don't know about China.
To be honest, most of the movies/shows China creates sucks. They're Marvel-esque CGI fests with awful storylines.
Meanwhile, Japan and Korea are creating awesome media.
The whole narrative about the US gov trying to "hide" China isn't really true. There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about how great China is. And we welcome Chinese immigrants every year.
The real problem is that China itself doesn't execute when it comes to soft power.
Highly recommend Three-Body, the Chinese version of the Three-Body Problem. I enjoyed it much more than the Netflix adaptation, much closer to the source material, and more of a slow burn. Episodes are available on YouTube with subs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-UO8jbrIoM).
Isn't the disillusionment of the main scientist related to the violent abuse of the CCP (and he loss of faith in humanity) core to the reasoning of why she reached out to the aliens, despite their warning? How do they restructure something so core to the plot?
Yeah, I mentioned 三体 in a parent comment. It's a great counterpoint to the "high fructose" Netflix version. And interesting to see the American character portrayed by an American actor...dubbed by a Chinese voice actor. (Just be prepared to fast-forward the musical interludes.)
I remember seeing an uptick in HN job posts, of which a large percentage (30%?) were AI startups. Now, will they still be there in 5 years? 10? Who can say. But technically, right now, they are jobs.
It does make sense that AI would empower smaller groups, but is important to keep in mind that these AI tools themselves like the LLM models and training, etc. will not be in the hands or created by small groups. Small groups will be beholden to these AI models and the subscription price may go up or even take the model of commercial real estate where they get a percentage of the revenue that’s generated using these tools. The data used to train these models is key. We all need to be very aware of this.
man, people are so stupid, loads and loads of people are saying that EMFs at close distance are kinda harmful, yet you get downvoted, precautionary principle is your best ally to avoid harm or worse, these technologies are new, and medicine/research moves slowly especially if lobbies by the biggest/wealthiest corps in the world are involved.
Whether it's the government or corporations, big organizations are the problem.
We need a small business revolution in this country.
Side note: An economy made up of small businesses was Adam Smith's original vision (the godfather of capitalism). He also hated the idea of a corporation. What we have today really is very far from Adam Smith capitalism.
> We need a small business revolution in this country
New York City is filled with small businesses. When walking distance puts you in range of entire towns’ populations, that becomes much easier. Emphasis, there, on both the distance and walking. Someone who drives into New York to go to a destination doesn’t pass as many small businesses as someone who takes transit.
Maybe an interesting question: How can you have a big city without a large organization to logistically make it work? Especially if it has coherent and well-run transit, and similar services, such as garbage/sewer/power/water.
> How can you have a big city without a large organization to logistically make it work?
Is there a large cohesive logistical operation even present? It seems to me the city is divided into boroughs, precincts and "special offices" all with their own individual mandates and approaches due to the complications inherent in large organizations.
> Especially if it has coherent and well-run transit
Well run? Compared to what?
> such as garbage/sewer/power/water.
The municipality does offer these services but you can arrange to have them handled privately if you want. They still have to follow the law but they're allowed to operate in the cities "territory." If the city was such a logistical juggernaut then why would these options even be necessary or utilized? If the city stopped providing these services and turned it over entirely to private business would the city stop existing?
The storyline as I remember it, was that startups can uniquely disrupt the big organizations (private or governmental) and unlock growth that was otherwise unavailable, and that's what attracted VC money in the first place. Innovator's Dilemma and all that. Seems like an eon ago.
The purpose of life is ultimately to acquire internal resources.
First, hunter-gatherer internal resources (we are all still hunter gatherers after all, biologically speaking). The kind that makes you a capable hunter, i.e. the ability to acquire food/goods:
- Self-confidence
- Self-belief
- Patience
- Ability to acquire new skills
- Charisma/EQ
- Ability to succeed in society and on earth
Then, the qualities preached in religion:
- Peace
- Love
- Kindness
- A teaching and empathetic heart towards others
- Compassion, etc.
Once you've acquired these things, you will no longer be afraid of death. Because you will have accomplished what you were born to do.
TLDR: Study the qualities that martial arts masters have. Because they are the people most at peace with death, which likely means they have accomplished what they were born to do. Then, acquire those qualities. Finally, teach others those qualiites.
Yes, but at some point you have to know where to draw the line. That line should be national security.
If China is indeed receiving data from TikTok, the future isn't going to be fun, especially with AI tech heating up.
Truth is, when China benefits, the Han Chinese people benefit. Every other ethnicity? Uncertain.
When the US benefits, a variety of ethnicities benefit. The US is now diverse enough where it must work in the interest of a variety of ethnicities in order to operate effectively.
So unless you're Han Chinese, you're more likely to benefit when the US wins.
This is true for other very effective cures: vitamin D has a similar story.
There is no money in cures that target the root cause which is often basic nutrition and using the biology as it was designed, instead drugs can be invented, patented, and when everybody takes them there isn't a control group left to notice that in aggregate they make things worse. And the doctors are indoctrinated to know nothing about nutrition, to be fearful or dismissive of supplementation (see: vitamin D) and believe there is a pharma drug for every condition.
The good news is it's rather easily fixable, but it is something that will never come from top down, it is and is going to be a bottom-up process.
The premise is that in the 1500s, no one thought Europe was going to be the next great power. The dominant civilizations at the time were the Chinese and the Ottomans.
Why did Europe win? Because no one could unify Europe. It was basically a collection of states.
Whereas China and the Ottoman Empire were centralized. The problem with centralization is that if the guy at the top says to do something, everyone must fall in line, even if it's a bad idea.
China used to have the most dominant navel fleet in the world. Then in the early 1500s, their government decided to stop building ships. Which ultimately led to them falling behind in the world order.
In Europe however, even if one country received a decree to stop building ships, it wouldn't stop the others from doing so. This created a hotbed of innovation and competition that allowed them to develop rapidly. And establish dominance.
The trade offs between centralization and decentralization are fascinating.
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