>Such centralized government power, too, may be the only force capable of counteracting the centralized power of corporations that are less accountable to the p

>Such centralized government power, too, may be the only force capable of counteracting the centralized power of corporations that are less accountable to the people whose lives they affect. In ways like this, most effective forms of decentralization actually imply some form of balance between centralized and decentralized power. A previous HN post said it best: what decentralists want is to reclaim power from larger organizations—power over their data and identity, power to switch to a competitor's client or build their own, etc. It's similar to the right-to-repair movement that way. The problem is that governments, corporations—groups really—can always be more powerful than an individual. That makes it advantageous to join one against your fellow individual. Plus once you pay your initiation fee to the group (usually giving up some autonomy), the marginal cost to you for additional members is often very low, or may even be outweighed by the marginal benefits, so you'll stay and the group aggregates members. Perhaps a field of individuals constantly vigilant could band together to sunder any proto-group before it gains traction (and then they'd have to disband themselves before becoming the target). Though I imagine that would be a constant arms race to detect group formation, and we've all see how apathetic people are toward even flagrant digital malpractice. Or maybe the government decrees that no company can have more than 10% market share. Bring on the conglomerates and umbrella corps. Perhaps resources can't be efficiently decentralized, only stateless protocols. Is that alone worth the effort? There would still be vendor lock-in. All I know is I want to wrest more power from corporations than I currently have over my digital experience without losing access to the resources they cloister.