The internet is still kind of a hierarchy though, "changing" "ownership" from the government DARPA to the non-profit ICANN. And that has worked... quite fine.

The internet is still kind of a hierarchy though, "changing" "ownership" from the government DARPA to the non-profit ICANN. And that has worked... quite fine. I have no objections (maybe they're a bit too liberal with the new TLDs). Most of the stuff that makes the hierarchies seem bad are actually faults of for-profit organizations (or other unsuited people/entities) being at the top, and not just that someone is at the top per se. In fact, in my experience, and contrary to popular expectation, when a hierarchy works well, an outsider shouldn't actually be able to immediately recognize it as such.