Its a worthwhile read, if nothing else it highlights the enormous talent, energy and conviction that went into so many projects that adopt some sort of federate

Its a worthwhile read, if nothing else it highlights the enormous talent, energy and conviction that went into so many projects that adopt some sort of federated / distributed architecture. Ergo, the "solution" is not technical, it is primarily political, at least as a catalyst. The main reason (imho) none of those (evidently workable) ideas has ever evolved to reach mainstream is the US political system malfunction (which is fairly evident in general...) but more specifically visible in relation to updating and enforcing anti-trust laws. In simple terms in recent decades the political class did not see a monopoly they didn't like. The result is that you can summarize recent tech history in a single sentence "The rise and fall of the Microsoft monopoly in the hands of the successor Google monopoly". Cutting "big tech" to size (big "tech" being a business sector misnomer that reveals the fake reality we all agree to swim in) will instantly propel decentralized protocols to mainstream: Smaller commercial operators will be forced to interoperate; Any usability issues or missing functionality will be developed in no-time. The tentative link to the "physical" economy and externalities towards the end of the post is quite aposite and solutions to its own problems will be increasingly entangled with "solving" the digital economy. Just take the pandemic as an example: it is not hard to imagine digital infrastructure playing a key role in quickly identifying and limiting the spread of pandemics yet there was huge and justified mistrust that the monopolies will abuse their role... Markets and virtual constructs such as corporates receive their legitimacy and license to operate from institutions serving the collective. When those institutions fail -> markets fail -> the collective suffers.