September11/Centralism Vs Decentralism

I can't tell yet if this is liberalist nonsense, wishful jingoism, or what I hope it is, a 50-year vision of networks+democracy+free markets changing the world.

I offer my condolences and prayers for those who were, or whose loved ones have been, involved in these tragedies. I wish it had not been so.

How does a centralized force fight a decentralized enemy? By decentralizing. How do you decentralize? Largely by using networked communications and information technology.

What I think the terrorists struck a terrible blow for, most probably without the intent to, is decentralization. In the most direct case, I think financial firms and other heavy users of information and communications technologies will decentralize their operations. If the lifeblood of the organization is data and communications anyway, which can live pretty much anywhere, why concentrate your physical assets and make them more vulnerable to attack?

In the most expansive vision, decentralization could come to mean a world democracy, people working with people on politics and economics, instead of centralized governments duking it out or imposing their will on their subjects. Maybe this is what the terrorists wanted. I suspect it will turn out to be the opposite of what they wanted, though.

I've reposted a good rant on the subject at /Todd Boyle.

(This is a nice, traditional libertarian rant. I agree completely, but it's less likely to happen now than it was a week ago.

''I'm puzzled by what you say. Surely the attackers have struck a blow against the sort of vision you suggest and for renewed central control. How do you see it the other way?)''

This London Times editorial /Matthew Parris captures some if it, too.

I wish I could make a good metaphor or write about it more effectively. "The tighter you clench your centralized fist, the more the distributed sand runs through your fingers?" Not explanatory enough.

Maybe this, as a thesis: the US is successful because democracy and free markets, as a control mechanism to manage and allocate resources, are smarter than any other control mechanism people might employ. Yes, there are lots of other things going on, up to and including exploitation of vast natural resources and US imperialism around the world. But the core control is efficient management and allocation of resources, based on democracy and free markets.

Networks and communications technologies help to perfect democracy and free markets, and are relatively blind to national borders.

If I were reading this from another country, one that didn't want to be "helped" into democracy and free markets by networks, communications technologies, and liberal US geeks, I'd be thinking, "Pete, you are so pickled in US imperialism that you're all mixed up and think that capitalism is the cause and not the result of US imperialism!"

I don't think so. Democracy is the best way to aggregate brain power. Free markets are just the economic form of natural selection. I don't like them better because they serve US imperialism best; they're just laws of nature.

-- Peter Kaminski, 20010915

See also /Stratfor No Easy Battle and /R.A.Hettinga.