> Large organized groups can offer substantially more economies of scale, and so can outcompete small organizations based on the economic goods they offer.
This premise ignores the existence of the Internet. Wherein small groups of distributed actors can combine their efforts through a nearly instantaneous communications mechanism to match that of the larger groups.
The federal government was conceived when horses were the only way to transmit large amounts of data over a great distance.
We built the replacement for large global groups but then kept the large global groups. The results were entirely predictable.
I agree that global communication technology has been part of what has shifted the balance from small to large. But there's still a fundamental tension between where people live and who they can communicate with. I may form a startup with coworkers all over the world, but we cannot get in a room together unless we get on planes, get visas, etc.
In fact, I would say this is a key source of the tension between large and small that Terry has identified. Yes, large organizations are more efficient at most of what we need as humans. But our ape brains still benefit from being close enough to smell the people we're working with. Until we evolve biologically, it's going to be a problem that it's so much easier to work remotely than it is to work together in person. And the world is only making it harder to do the latter right now.
This premise ignores the existence of the Internet. Wherein small groups of distributed actors can combine their efforts through a nearly instantaneous communications mechanism to match that of the larger groups.
The federal government was conceived when horses were the only way to transmit large amounts of data over a great distance.
We built the replacement for large global groups but then kept the large global groups. The results were entirely predictable.