[bit-anarchist]

First, whether something is meaningful or not, depends on the subject.

Independence here isn't about whether your mind exists in a parallel world - devoid of external inputs - it's whether your input is required for an action to happen or not. They didn't simply comply with a choice from above, they experimented and came with an option that works for them. It doesn't matter whether that's a common choice or not, but who held the final authority in it.

In centralized systems, your input is, in theory, basically irrelevant/in practice, completely irrelevant unless you happen to the central authority.