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I would argue that centralized control lends itself to corruption more easily and distributed control.

After all, if there exist a central authority, only that one authority being corrupt messes up everything.

On the other hand, a distributed scenario makes it more difficult for a handful of well-connected profit-motivated bad actors to corrupt the entire thing.

But a distributed set-up is more complex (and more expensive), that's for sure




I would argue that a rich actor can more easily corrupt a large number of small autonomous feifdoms by a combination of bribes, equivocations, and good ol' divide-and-conquer strategies. A low barrier to entry to acquire absolute control over a small but critical piece of Internet routing infrastructure may democratize that infrastructure in theory, but in practice it also lowers the barrier to entry for corruption without some additional system-wide checks and balances. Otherwise, a not-so-rich but enterprising corrupt actor could incrementally buy up the small pieces and use them as leverage to acquire more and more pieces until they own the majority of them.


I disagree but also think you're correct.

if one rich actor can gobble up the small decentralized pieces then they have become a single centralized piece.




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