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Decentralize Everything?

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February 7th, 2021
David Brin wrote an essay called Disputation Arenas years ago. I find that I benefit from re-reading it every now and then, and it was helpful for this topic.
Brin says that the institutions that work well have decentralized competitive forces and centralized adjudication forces. I think of NCAA basketball (ignoring any connection with education). Each team goes off by itself to strategize and to practice. That is the decentralized force. The NCAA sets the rules of the game and conducts the championship tournament known as March Madness. The NCAA is the centralized force.
Teams will exploit flaws in the rules. I can recall in the early 1980s the "four-corner stall." Rather than try to score a basket, the team would hold onto the ball until time ran out. In 1985, the NCAA instituted a shot clock to suppress the four-corner stall, making for a better game.
In general, you want innovation to come from the decentralized competition, with the rule-arbitration process relatively stable. In terms of an information theory metaphor, you want rule-arbitration to be a low-noise medium through which the signals of competition can flow.
The "classic Internet" fit this model. The rules were the protocols that allowed computers to talk to one another. The Internet Engineering Task Forces were the arbiters. The various entities that used the Internet were innovating and competing intensely. The IETFs were the NCAA, and the rest of us played the game.
Things don't work so well when players become rule-arbiters. Think of lobbyists who shape regulations. Nor do we want rule-arbiters to act like players. Think of judges who inject their political views into their rulings.
Some of the stress that we are seeing now is the result of the Internet shaking up the relationship between rule-arbiters and players. In the days of the classic Internet, we used to say that the Net sees censorship as damage and routes around it. Today, we see players like Facebook or Twitter or Google/YouTube as arbiters. They determine what content enjoys a prominent position, what gets buried, and what gets blocked completely.
Journalists were arbiters of truth 50 years ago, but they are players today. Political party organizations were arbiters of who could run for high office 20 years ago, but today they cannot filter out Donald Trump or other insurgents (maybe the Democratic party organization was able to filter out Bernie Sanders in the Presidential race.)
Twenty years ago, Wall Street professionals thought they had sufficient control over information and capital to be the ones to tell us what is a valuable asset and what is a chimera. Now they cannot suppress that fascination with GameStop or Bitcoin.
In several key realms—journalism, thought leadership, politics, and finance—the role of rule-arbiter seems to be up for grabs. This is not sustainable. It is like the NCAA has lost its authority and basketball players are fighting over whatever comes next.
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