[AnthonyMouse]

It's not even that. It's that "centralization is more efficient" is a big fat lie. If you look at the "centralized systems" they're... not actually technologically centralized, they're really just a monopolist that internally implements a distributed system.

How do you think Google or Cloudflare actually work? One big server in San Francisco that runs the whole world, or lots of servers distributed all over?

[baq]

I know exactly how they work, but they have a single entry point, as a customer you don't really care that the system is global, and they also have a single control plane, etc. Decisions are efficient if they need to be taken only once. The underlying architecture is irrelevant for the end user.

Why do you think they're a monopoly in the first place? Obviously because they were more efficient than the competition and network effects took care of the rest. Having to make choices is a cost for the consumer - IOW consumers are lazy - so winners have staying power, too. It's a perfect storm for a winner-takes-all centralization since a good centralized service is the most efficient utility-wise ('I know I'm getting what I need') and decision-cost-wise ('I don't need to search for alternatives') for consumers until it switches to rent seeking, which is where the anti-monopoly laws should kick in.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Decisions are efficient if they need to be taken only once.

In other words, open source decentralized systems are the most efficient because you don't have to reduplicate a competitor's effort when you can just use the same code.

> Obviously because they were more efficient than the competition and network effects took care of the rest.

In most cases it's just the network effect, and whether it was a proprietary or open system in any given case is no more than the historical accident of which one happened to gain traction first.

> Having to make choices is a cost for the consumer

If you want an email address you can choose between a few huge providers and a thousand smaller ones, but that doesn't seem to prevent anyone from using it.

> until it switches to rent seeking

If it wasn't an open system from the beginning then that was always the end state and there is no point in waiting for someone to lock the door before trying to remove yourself from the cage.

[baq]

> just use the same code

This is the great lie. Approximately zero end consumers care about code, the product they consume is the service, and if the marginal cost of switching the service provider is zero, it's enough to be 1% better to take 99% of the market.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Approximately zero end consumers care about code

Most people don't care about reading it. They very much care about what it does.

Also, it's not "approximately zero" at all. It's millions or tens of millions of people out of billions, and when a small minority of people improve the code -- because they have the ability to -- it improves the code for all the rest too. Which is why they should have a preference for the ability to do it even if they're not going to be the one to exercise it themselves.

> if the marginal cost of switching the service provider is zero, it's enough to be 1% better to take 99% of the market.

Except that you'd then need to be 1% better across all dimensions for different people to not have different preferences, and everyone else is trying to carve out a share of the market too. Meanwhile if you were doing something that actually did cause 99% of people to prefer a service that does that then everybody else would start doing it.

There are two main things that cause monopolies. The first is a network effect, which is why those things all need to be open systems. The second is that one company gets a monopoly somewhere (often because of the first, sometimes through anti-competitive practices like dumping) and then leverages it in order to monopolize the supply chain before and after that thing, so that competing with them now requires not just competing with the original monopoly but also reproducing the rest of the supply chain which is now no longer available as independent commodities.

This is why we need antitrust laws, but also why we need to recognize that antitrust laws are never perfect and do everything possible to stamp out anything that starts to look like one of those markets through development of open systems and promoting consumer aversion to products that are inevitably going to ensnare them.

"People don't want X" based on observed behavior is a bunch of nonsense. People's preferences depend on their level of information. If they don't realize they're walking into a trap then they're going to step right into it. That isn't the same thing as "people prefer walking into a trap". They need to be educated about what a trap looks like so they don't keep ending up hanging upside down by their ankles as all the money gets shaken out of their pockets.