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(eval 'Toast)@toast@donotsta.re (2026-07-23 06:27:39)
the needs of most people are 90+% similar, so efficiency looks like applying economies of scale to these needs to require fewer resources
this is just true, in fact capitalism has come to the same conclusion, which is one of the reasons centralization is so common
unfortunately once you go in this direction you end up with secondary failure conditions
the capitalist one is very well-understood: since it demands growth, once you have met those needs, you need to find a way to extract additional value out of people, even if the whole planet is your userbase, so you have to keep changing stuff and making things nobody needs and get everyone to play along and pay along
even if we were to eliminate this, this same centralization also creates a horribly fragile system : global trade between specialized hubs is efficient, but when a canal is blocked the whole world feels it; resource distribution is controlled by the strongest, so when the loudest voices backed by guns demand a resource (and are willing to give something back for it too), nobody has any left; when the biggest banana plantation gets a virus, it spreads like wildfire and the entire species becomes extinct overnight
which is to say that some degree of smaller, duplicated, inefficient but distributed is required for sustainability, without even needing to consider other negatives (such as the rampant exploitation required to run these systems)
on top of this, the 90% similarity completely ignores the dissimilarity of the remnant. the greater the stack and engine of economy of scale, the harder it is to make any adjustments, meaning that while most of the needs of most will be met, no one's needs will be met in full
what's worse is that scaling is not a linear relationship, it is a curve. the amortized "cost per user" may flatten out eventually, but remains real, meaning that in absolute terms the costs remain astronomical but now the people delivering needs are infinitely removed from those receiving them. we
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Ignas Kiela@ignaloidas@not.acu.lt (2026-07-23 20:57:15)
@toast@donotsta.re My problem with this is that it is incredibly dumb to duplicate infrastructure. Stuff like roads, railways, electricity grids, etc. The benefits you can get from decentralizing those is tiny in comparison to the cost. The usage of the infrastructure should very much be decentralized, but IMO, at least regionally, the building, maintenance, and general management of infrastructure should very much be centralized (and arguably, for some stuff the regions should be as big as politically viable, e.g. for trains, having a border in the route makes the planing process like 10x more difficult because now you have to coordinate between multiple different entities who don't have insights into each other that's needed for efficient operations).

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(eval 'Toast)@toast@donotsta.re (2026-07-23 21:02:16)
@ignaloidas I'm not sure how you would "centralize" a railway per se
rail, roads, etc go from point A to point B
you could centralize construction of those, but as it turns out, people halfway across the world do not know what roads your area needs, what rail your area needs
so they either trust you to tell them (this never works out) or they decide for you (poor results)
germany is one of those countries that has multiple tiers, i.e. some roads are built and paid for by the state, while others by the region
there's a lot of politics going on to have the state build and maintain the roads that are in the interest of the region, all to have a single road that goes across many many regions, instead of two regions collaborating at a time and having a web (closer to the german rail network in some ways)
as for having to coordinate between many different entities : you have to anyway! they're just hidden from you. for example, france is well-known for having a star-shaped rail network, with a single state-ish operator (SNCF), but as it turns out they just divide themselves up internally
that's why (for example) Alsace SNCF (Fluo) is decent, while a lot of the rest is... not
the consequence is you get the worst of both worlds : people that have nothing to do with the region make decisions for it, but you also end up with decentralized handling