Because the resources, communication and computer power, and weaponry available to individuals is an order of magnitude greater than they’ve ever been, we are entering an epoch of massive decentralization, whether the centralizing powers like it or not. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:
The other day a friend contacted me, looking for an article that explained why centralization is bad. At first I was sure there had to be many, but I came up dry. Hence today’s article.
The odd thing about centralization is that people expect its bad aspects to be external things, like economic issues. But those aren’t the most important things. If the internal effects of centralization were recognized, and if we did something about them, the outer problems would vanish with them.
But since everyone expects economic reasons, I’ll start there:
#1: Centralization disrupts price discovery.
“Disrupting price discovery” sounds exotic, but what it means is this: Whenever headquarters decides to meddle in business transactions, large sections of the marketplace are thrown out of order. The biggest offenders in this area were the 20th century’s socialist states. I’m not sure precisely how many people died (mainly of starvation) from their economic “experiments,” but the number is in the range of 100 million.
Prices are not just numbers, you see; they are crucial information. How many separate prices, for example, go into the delivery of a pencil to your local store? Wood, graphite, lacquer, the pigment for the lacquer, the machines that mix and apply the lacquer, the machines that cut the trees into small pieces of wood, the trucks that move the materials, the cost of hiring the drivers, the cost of the tires, and so on, at great length. (Please see I, Pencil, by Leonard Reed.)
