Centralization helped to mitigate some of the problems and there is no reason to think that these couldn't have been solved in a decentralized manner as well. M

Centralization helped to mitigate some of the problems and there is no reason to think that these couldn't have been solved in a decentralized manner as well. Moreover centralization introduced a swath of new problems. I think the reason centralization has won is because it is the way of least resistance in our current environment.