Are we decentralized yet?

I have diligently searched for this article online and have been unable to find it. (It might be on microfiche somewhere...)

I did however, find this humorous anecdote:

> A Lotus executive later joked, "The first month we shipped 62,000 copies, and the following month we got 64,000 copies back. It was such a failure they sent us the bootlegged copies back."

https://www.forbes.com/2003/12/16/cx_el_macslide.html

Sadly, and fortunately, there is no such thing as "avoiding centralization", the evidence is overwhelming:

== Politics & Sociology (power concentrates in organizations)

- Robert Michels, Political Parties (1911) origin of the "iron law of oligarchy": even democratic groups tend to end up run by a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

- Jo Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" (1970/72): leaderless groups develop informal, unaccountable elites unless they make structure explicit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

- Max Weber, bureaucracy & rational-legal authority: why modern societies gravitate to rule-bound, hierarchical administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational-legal_authority

- James G. March & Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (1958): classics on bounded rationality and why attention/decision bottlenecks yield hierarchy: https://www.amazon.se/-/en/James-G-March/dp/0471567930

== Economics & Political Economy (why markets/platforms centralize)

- Ronald Coase, "The Nature of the Firm" (1937): firms exist (and grow) when internal coordination is cheaper than market exchange: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937...

- Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies (1975): transaction-cost economics: asset specificity & opportunism push activity into hierarchies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1496220

- W. Brian Arthur, "Increasing Returns and Lock-In" (1989): small early advantages + network effects => path-dependent monopolies: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2234208

- Katz & Shapiro, network effects (1985/1994): compatibility and standards help explain winner-take-most dynamics: https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/systems.pdf

- Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014): when r > g, wealth concentrates; proposes progressive wealth taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

== Networks, Complexity & Information (why hubs and hierarchies emerge)

Albert-László Barabási, Linked (2002): preferential attachment makes networks develop hubs (central nodes) http://networksciencebook.com/chapter/5

Herbert A. Simon, "The Architecture of Complexity" (1962): complex systems often become hierarchical because modular hierarchies are easier to evolve and manage https://faculty.sites.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/archive/tesfatsi/...

W. Ross Ashby, "Law of Requisite Variety" (1956): controllers need at least as much "variety" as the environment and it often pushes toward central coordinating mechanisms (or many distributed ones with enough capacity) http://pcp.vub.ac.be/books/AshbyReqVar.pdf

Gilbert & Lynch, proof of the CAP theorem (2002): in distributed computing you can’t have perfect consistency + availability under network partitions and real systems centralize/compromise to cope: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/tds/papers/Gilbert/Brewer2.pdf

Robert K. Merton, "The Matthew Effect" (1968): cumulative advantage: success attracts more success, reinforcing centralization of recognition/resources https://garfield.library.upenn.edu/merton/matthew1.pdf

== State power, legibility & infrastructure (why governments centralize)

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998): states seek legibility and large projects favor central plans and standardized populations/landscapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State (literally anything by Jim Scott -RIP- will be useful)

Tim Wu, The Master Switch (2010): communications industries cycle from openness to centralized "information empires" https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...

== Technology & platforms (contemporary centralization)

Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (2017): explains how platform business models + data/network effects produce concentration https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Platform+Capitalism-p-9781509504...

== When decentralization can work

Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990): shows conditions (clear rules, monitoring, graduated sanctions, polycentric governance) under which decentralized, federated management of shared resources succeed https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/governing-the-commons/A...

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the literature making a counterpoint is abundant / overwhelming but that feels bleak considering when reading these works, systems thinking )the basis for "la technique") favors centralization

I'm admittedly not versed in the AT protocol, but $30/month is high for me. Something like $10/month is quite fair, and i would expect should be more than enough for a VPS to host my and 2 other members of my family for any social network service...This $10/month is overkill for other servers on the ActivityPub via say gotosocial, pleroma, etc. Not that ActivityPub is perfect or anything like that, i just mean that $30/month is not yet what i would call a sweet spot for self-hosting something...but of course, that is absolutely leagues better than any cost that the bluesky team or other bigger players would naturally have to pay for ongoing infra., etc.

Then again, i will not deny that there's also the possibility that i am simply cheap! :-)

So why not just wordpress and rss?

We've had the protocols and tech for decentralized services for 20+ years. The problem isn't the tech, it's the users! Your average Joe simply doesn't have 'must be decentralized' in their requirements. I'm guessing this is due to lack of education on the matter.

But, yes I agree with you :)