What Does Decentralisation Mean To Me?

This post is motivated on the initiative of @theycallmedan to encourage people post about what decentralisation means and why is it valuable.

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Human society is one of the most fascinating fields of study, in my leisure time (if any lol) I enjoy reading articles and some books of sociologists, economists, politicians, anthropologists, and psychologists.

My scientific-oriented education drives me to think about this subject from a rational perspective. So first lets try to answer why do we have centralisation at all?

Does centralisation has any benefit?

Centralised systems are arguably more efficient in many scenarios -provided that the central entity's interests are aligned with those of the other people within the system...

We all know how this ends.... So is it there another advantage in centralisation?

Ideally, centralised system allows cohesion of otherwise highly heterogeneous groups,one of the reasons for the success of the CCP to hold into power for so long is that China's history is full of inner conflicts because of the difference between each region on that huge country. Thus, Chinese folks do appreciate the stability and economic boost the CCP has managed to grant to their country, even though this idea might trouble most of us, maybe a centralised system is what works best for them... in social sciences there´s not such a thing as an universal truth and despite we are fully convinced that decentralisation and ever growing freedom levels is the best way of living, for some folks it might not be the same.

But, the vast majority of centralised systems ends up hurting the people their supposed to be taken care of, just as Justin Sun is destroying the platform he is supposed to be giving a boost to, hence decentralisation it is for me.

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The challenge decentralised system faces... aka Selfishness

A decentralised systems needs that the people who has some degree of influence always choose the greater good over it's own benefit... and this is not a concept most of us are used to. The core value of the system who has yielded the best economic results (Capitalism) is free competition, and this idea's foundation is neither cooperation between parties nor willingness to build a greater framework for the society to develop and grow onto. It's more like a clever solution to factor in the ever present individual greed and fuel collective grow using each individual desire to be one step ahead of the others.

IMHO, decentralised blockchain-based systems offers a further improvement of that clever solution, by coding an immutable trustless rule sets under which a group can agree to develop specific activities, we can better align each party interests towards a common goal that benefits the whole group rather than driving the benefits onto a few hands.

In that sense, the blockchain technology allows for more fairness, transparency and accountability of each individual actions.

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Current witnesses dilema

_{LOL Not so hard to find out who is our beloved platform, who is Justin and who is the community on this meme}

Why we just don't move away from this draining battle with a foe we cannot defeat under the current rules of this system (Justin can just buy 51% of the Steem supply)? Because no one is willing to give up on the money they poured into the present STEEM token, and Justin is taking advantage of that... negotiations are on and under the table because nobody wants to give up on the hope that in the future Steem moons and get a ten fold ROI...

So, we should make up our minds and choose what STEEM (the blockchain) is, an investment vehicle or a platform upon which a future with endless possibilities can be built... If it's the first option just bear with the centralisation wave the new millionaire brings alongside with his big pockets, and if it is the second just fork away from anything that threatens what we're creating here and move on.

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Note: how infrastructure costs can be handled?

On one Discord Chat I was told that an investment of about 30K USD on hardware is needed to run API nodes, and something around 700USD to run full nodes. (Please correct me if I'm wrong) With 4 API nodes and 20 full nodes are we good to go? if yes then we need to crowfund something like 140K USD, around 70 USD from each community member.... I have seen more expensive coffees, from that one the monthly fee could be like 10 USD if we manage to keep a minimum of 2k active users... is it too difficult? Only time can tell.

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Thanks for reading my post, best regards.
_{All gifs were taken from Giphy}