100 years of whatever this will be

Re:100 years of whatever this will be by cs702 on Thursday December 02, 2021 @12:05PM (#29418905)

In practice, any distributed system that doesn't have an explicit hierarchy evolves to have an implicit hierarchy, because economies of scale and network effects favor the increasing concentration of resources and connectivity, respectively. The OP is right about that.

In any distributed system, those nodes that by luck or skill become more cost-efficient and inter-connected tend to become even more cost-efficient and inter-connected, because all other nodes want to connect via the most cost-efficient, most inter-connected nodes.

This dynamic is self-reinforcing. We are all familiar with it.

Without some form of regulation (historically centralized, and always imperfect), distributed systems like market-driven economies, modern financial markets, and information networks evolve to have growing inequality of resources and connectivity over time.

I'm not aware of any exception.

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Re:100 years of whatever this will be by deathcalibur on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:32PM (#29420280)

This happens with teams of humans as well. Without a formal leader, teams will naturally have one (or more) leaders emerge.

The ideal team doesn’t need leadership and consists of mostly self-sufficient members, but the de jure leader merely exists at that point to ensure some tyrant doesn’t come to power. Since this isn’t very time consuming, they are free to do other work haha.

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Re:100 years of whatever this will be by spiralx on Friday December 03, 2021 @11:32AM (#29431860)

The essay linked in the article is absolutely spot on when talking about the dynamics of groups with formalised structures vs those that are decentralised, it's well worth a read.

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

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