In the most recent episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast, he interviews a political scientist who has a new book out about the problems caused by federation of government power to the state in the U.S.
It struck me is that it seems like not all that different a situation from the internet, the web, and social media services.
What is interesting is that in the first case, the way to solve the problem seems to be to re-centralize, while in the second case, it is to re-federate.
It seems like whichever way you go, existing power tends to find the best way to keep flowing and to control the infratstucture that runs the systems.