3 ms·

> After some years I realized that centralization happens because decentralization is in some sense like communism. If you take away ownership over private prop

> After some years I realized that centralization happens because decentralization is in some sense like communism. If you take away ownership over private property then people lose the incentive to improve it. It becomes a commons and the usual tragedy follows. Its really interesting to me that this was one of your takeaways, I actually would have seen it the other way around but haven't worked in the space nearly as much as you have. The way I see it, centralization of the internet is the analog to communism and the argument for it would be that the internet and the services we use every day are so vital to daily life that one authority needs to own it to make sure everyone has access. In that view, decentralization would lead to things being poorly maintained and abused for selfish gain. Centralization (communism) would benevolently protect the common resources on everyone's behalf and make sure those resources are fairly made available to all. From that angle, centralization of the internet is likely to follow the same road as historic examples of communism. We would see corruption, censorship, and power/money being syphoned off to the few in charge. That sure does feel like the centralized internet we have today.

mike_hearn 3y ago
I was referring to theoretical communism, the one where there's no private property for real, where everything is communally managed. Perhaps anarchocommunism is a better term. Tragedy of the commons gets the issue across just as well. In practice communist countries were highly centralized, agreed. All property was the private property of the state. > benevolently protect the common resources on everyone's behalf A resource is too abstract a notion. The things we're talking about here are services which can adapt and improve. In his essay, Marlinspike was trying to communicate that you can't federate or decentralize because "the ecosystem is moving" i.e. your centralized competitors are innovating and you have to keep up with them or ideally even exceed them. Mere protection here isn't good enough, it requires active change that may upset some stakeholders. Collectivism fails here because of its totalizing nature: there's one of everything, which is theoretically at least communal property. But then you have to please everyone, so the only changes you can make are the ultra-low risk ones and because you often don't know the risk, in practice that means you're forced to simply clone what is observed to work elsewhere. So you end up permanently behind and with time it gets harder and harder to keep up. With competition that's less likely to happen, because there's an incentive to take risks and do things that may upset some existing users, if you think it'll please even more people who aren't your users today. This is a core tension that appears whenever people talk about decentralization. It's the way the Bitcoin community lost the plot as well. Some people interpret it to mean "one universal totalising system which is collectively owned". Other people interpret it as "an interoperable system of many competitors that can innovate and diverge from each other when needed".
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Totally fair. What Moxie argues for in that essay is effectively a setup where the service and data are centralized but importantly the control/power is kept out if the central authority as much as possible. I can definitely see an argument there for that centralized model being akin to theoretical communism.

mike_hearn 3y ago

I was referring to theoretical communism, the one where there's no private property for real, where everything is communally managed. Perhaps anarchocommunism is a better term. Tragedy of the commons gets the issue across just as well. In practice communist countries were highly centralized, agreed. All property was the private property of the state. > benevolently protect the common resources on everyone's behalf A resource is too abstract a notion. The things we're talking about here are services which can adapt and improve. In his essay, Marlinspike was trying to communicate that you can't federate or decentralize because "the ecosystem is moving" i.e. your centralized competitors are innovating and you have to keep up with them or ideally even exceed them. Mere protection here isn't good enough, it requires active change that may upset some stakeholders. Collectivism fails here because of its totalizing nature: there's one of everything, which is theoretically at least communal property. But then you have to please everyone, so the only changes you can make are the ultra-low risk ones and because you often don't know the risk, in practice that means you're forced to simply clone what is observed to work elsewhere. So you end up permanently behind and with time it gets harder and harder to keep up. With competition that's less likely to happen, because there's an incentive to take risks and do things that may upset some existing users, if you think it'll please even more people who aren't your users today. This is a core tension that appears whenever people talk about decentralization. It's the way the Bitcoin community lost the plot as well. Some people interpret it to mean "one universal totalising system which is collectively owned". Other people interpret it as "an interoperable system of many competitors that can innovate and diverge from each other when needed".

_heimdall 3y ago
Totally fair. What Moxie argues for in that essay is effectively a setup where the service and data are centralized but importantly the control/power is kept out if the central authority as much as possible. I can definitely see an argument there for that centralized model being akin to theoretical communism.