[smilliken]

You're right on all points.

Still, some of the most successful systems are decentralized: internet, telephone, email, torrent, bitcoin et al, the web (caveat that DNS is centralized), etc.

All of these examples are basically networks of people. Do we want these networks operated by private companies?

[jcfrei]

I think what you refer to as decentralized systems is for the most part applications on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack. Still I wouldn't call the examples you provided - with the exception of torrents - as decentralized. The internet and the telephone systems are mostly run by a few large ISPs and CDNs, email by a few large providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook), and for most people the web consists of Facebook, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, etc and a few large newspaper sites.