Balance of power
Special thanks to Gabriel Alfour, Audrey Tang and Ahmed Gatnash for feedback and review.
特别感谢 Gabriel Alfour、Audrey Tang 和 Ahmed Gatnash 的反馈和审查。
Many of us are afraid of Big Business .
我们很多人都害怕大企业。
We like the products and services that companies provide, but dislike trillion-dollar monopolistic walled gardens , video games that turn into quasi-gambling, and companies manipulating entire governments for profit.
我们喜欢公司提供的产品和服务，但不喜欢价值数万亿美元的垄断围墙花园、变成准赌博的视频游戏以及操纵整个政府以获取利润的公司。
Many of us are afraid of Big Government .
我们很多人都害怕大政府。
We like police and courts, public order, and various services, but we dislike governments arbitrarily picking winners and losers, restricting what people can say or read or think, violating human rights or starting wars.
我们喜欢警察和法院、公共秩序和各种服务，但我们不喜欢政府任意挑选赢家和输家，限制人们可以说、读或想的内容，侵犯人权或发动战争。
Finally, many of us are afraid of the third corner of the triangle: Big Mob .
最后，我们中的许多人都害怕三角形的第三个角：大暴徒。
We like independent civil society , charities and Wikipedia, but we dislike mobs lynching people , cancel culture, and things like the later stages of the French Revolution or the Taiping Rebellion .
我们喜欢独立的公民社会、慈善机构和维基百科，但我们不喜欢暴民私刑处死人、取消文化，以及法国大革命后期或太平天国运动之类的事情。
Basically, we like progress - whether in technology, economy or culture - but we fear the three historically most powerful generators of such progress.
基本上，我们喜欢进步——无论是在技术、经济还是文化方面——但我们担心历史上最强大的三个进步推动者。
A common response to this conundrum is the idea of balance of power .
对这个难题的常见反应是均势的想法。
If we need powerful forces in society, then they should be balanced - either each force balanced within itself (eg.
如果我们在社会中需要强大的力量，那么它们应该是平衡的——要么每种力量在其自身内部保持平衡（例如，
competition between companies), or between each other, or ideally both.
公司之间的竞争），或彼此之间的竞争，或者最好是两者之间的竞争。
Historically, much of this balance would come automatically: there are natural diseconomies of scale that arise as a result of distance, or the need to coordinate very large numbers of people to do global-scale tasks.
从历史上看，这种平衡在很大程度上是自动实现的：由于距离的原因，或者需要协调大量人员来完成全球范围的任务，自然会出现规模不经济。
In this century, however, this is an assumption that no longer holds true: all of the above forces are getting much stronger at the same time, and can no longer avoid frequently interacting.
然而，到了本世纪，这个假设不再成立：上述所有力量同时变得更加强大，并且不再能够避免频繁的相互作用。
In this post, I will expand on this theme, and suggest some strategies for preserving this increasingly delicate feature of the world going forward.
在这篇文章中，我将扩展这个主题，并提出一些策略来保护未来世界日益微妙的特征。
In a previous post, I described this emerging world, where "Big X is here to stay for all X", as " the dense jungle ".
在上一篇文章中，我将这个“大 X 为所有 X 留在这里”的新兴世界描述为“茂密的丛林”。
There is a good reason to fear government: a government has a lot of guns, and it can use those guns to hurt you.
害怕政府是有充分理由的：政府有很多枪，它可以用这些枪来伤害你。
A government has the power to ruin you that far exceeds anything Mark Zuckerberg or cryptocurrency sellers could do even if they wanted to.
政府有能力毁掉你，这远远超出了马克·扎克伯格或加密货币卖家所能做的任何事，即使他们愿意。
For this reason, centuries of liberal political theory have focused on the problem of "taming the leviathan" - getting the benefits of government providing law and order, without the downsides of a king being able to do whatever he wants to his subjects.
出于这个原因，几个世纪以来的自由主义政治理论都集中在“驯服利维坦”的问题上——获得政府提供法律和秩序的好处，同时避免国王对臣民为所欲为的弊端。
Much of that theory can be summarized in one sentence: the government should act like a game, not like a player .
该理论的大部分内容可以用一句话来概括：政府应该像一场游戏一样行事，而不是像一个玩家一样。
That is: as much as possible, the government should be a reliable playing field that productively resolves disputes between people on its territory, and not an agent that actively pushes its own goals.
也就是说：政府应该尽可能成为一个可靠的竞争环境，有效地解决其领土上人们之间的争端，而不是一个积极推动自己目标的代理人。
Even outside of governments traditionally considered "liberal", a similar idea applies.
即使在传统上被认为是“自由”的政府之外，类似的想法也适用。
There has been a recent finding that, among governments classified as authoritarian , the ones that consistently deliver less economic growth are the ones that are "personalistic" , as compared to those that are " institutionalized ".
最近的一项发现表明，在被归类为威权政府的政府中，与“制度化”政府相比，那些经济增长持续较低的政府是“个人主义”政府。
It is not always possible to avoid the government having characteristics of a player, particularly because of the possibility of external conflict: if a player goes to war against a game, the player wins.
政府并不总是能够避免具有玩家特征，特别是因为外部冲突的可能性：如果玩家对游戏发动战争，玩家就会获胜。
But even when the possibility of the government becoming a player is needed, it is often tightly controlled: see the Roman custom of electing a dictator , who would have great power for a short term, but then return to normal once the emergency ends.
但即使需要政府参与的可能性，也常常受到严格控制：参见罗马选举独裁者的习俗，独裁者会在短期内拥有强大的权力，但一旦紧急状态结束，就会恢复正常。
One succinct way to split up criticism of corporations is as follows:
消除对公司的批评的一种简洁方法如下：
The first issue (corporations being evil) happens because corporations are just very good optimization machines, and as they get more powerful (both in capability and in size), their goal of maximizing profit diverges more and more from the goal of their users and wider society.
第一个问题（企业是邪恶的）的发生是因为企业只是非常好的优化机器，随着它们变得越来越强大（无论是能力还是规模），它们利润最大化的目标越来越偏离用户和更广泛社会的目标。
You can often see this pattern in industries that start out organic and hobbyist, but then become more and more profit-oriented - and at the same time in conflict with their users' interests - over time.
您经常可以在行业中看到这种模式，这些行业最初是有机的和业余爱好者，但随着时间的推移，变得越来越以利润为导向，同时与用户的利益发生冲突。
Like, say:
比如，说：
Left: percent of coins directly allocated to insiders in newly launched cryptocurrencies, ~2009-21.
左：新推出的加密货币中直接分配给内部人士的硬币百分比，~2009-21。
Right: THC concentration in marijuana, ~1970-2020.
右图：大麻中的 THC 浓度，~1970-2020 年。
You also see the same pattern in video games: a space that originally focused on fun and fulfillment now increasingly focuses on built-in slot machine mechanisms to maximally extract money from players.
您还会在视频游戏中看到相同的模式：最初专注于乐趣和满足感的空间现在越来越关注内置老虎机机制，以最大限度地从玩家那里获取金钱。
Even major prediction markets have started to show a worrying tendency to focus not on pro-social goals like making better news media or improving governance , but on sports betting.
即使是主要的预测市场也开始表现出令人担忧的趋势，即不再关注打造更好的新闻媒体或改善治理等亲社会目标，而是关注体育博彩。
Those examples come more from increases in capability, coupled with competitive pressure.
这些例子更多地来自于能力的提高以及竞争压力。
There is a different set of examples that come from increases in size.
有一组不同的例子来自尺寸的增加。
In general, as a corporation gets larger, it gains more ability to benefit from bending its surrounding environment (including economy, politics and culture) to its will.
一般来说，随着公司规模的扩大，它就越有能力从周围环境（包括经济、政治和文化）中获益。
A company that is 10x larger will benefit 10x more from bending its environment to a particular degree, and so it will perform such actions at all more often than a smaller company - and when it does, it will do so with 10x the resources.
规模扩大 10 倍的公司将通过将其环境调整到特定程度而获得 10 倍的收益，因此它会比规模较小的公司更频繁地执行此类操作 - 并且当它这样做时，它将使用 10 倍的资源。
Mathematically, this is the same argument as why monopolists price above marginal cost and increase their profit at the expense of societal deadweight loss: in that case, the "environment" is the market price, and monopolists are "bending the environment" by restricting the quantity they sell.
从数学上讲，这与为什么垄断者的价格高于边际成本并以社会无谓损失为代价来增加利润的论点相同：在这种情况下，“环境”就是市场价格，垄断者通过限制销售数量来“扭曲环境”。
How much bending you can do is proportional to your market share.
您可以弯曲的程度与您的市场份额成正比。
But expressed in these more general terms, it's a powerful argument that applies in a wide variety of situations (eg.
但用这些更笼统的术语来表达，这是一个强有力的论据，适用于各种情况（例如，
corporate lobbying, De Beers style cultural manipulation campaigns...).
企业游说、戴比尔斯式的文化操纵活动……）。
The second issue (corporations being lame) involves corporations being boring and sterile and risk-averse, and creating outcomes that are homogeneous on very large scales - both within individual corporations and between them.
第二个问题（公司是蹩脚的）涉及公司无聊、乏味和规避风险，并在很大范围内创造同质的结果——无论是在单个公司内部还是在公司之间。
Architectural monoculture is one archetypal form of corporate lameness
建筑单一文化是企业跛行的一种典型形式
The word "soulless" is interesting because it has a connotation that is halfway between "evil" and "lame".
“没有灵魂”这个词很有趣，因为它的含义介于“邪恶”和“蹩脚”之间。
"Soulless" feels like a natural way to describe corporations addicting people for clicks or creating cartels to raise prices or polluting rivers, but it also feels like a natural way to describe corporations making every city in the world look exactly the same, or making ten Hollywood movies that are exact replicas of each other, or...
“没有灵魂”感觉像是一种自然的方式来描述公司让人们上瘾的点击或创建卡特尔来提高价格或污染河流，但它也感觉像是一种自然的方式来描述公司让世界上每个城市看起来一模一样，或者制作十部彼此完全相同的好莱坞电影，或者......
I would argue that these two types of soullessness both come from two factors: commonality of motive , and commonality of agency .
我认为这两种类型的无灵魂都来自两个因素：动机的共性和能动性的共性。
Corporations are all highly motivated by the profit motive, and many powerful actors with the same strong motivation will inevitably pull in the same direction, without strong countervailing forces to pull in other directions.
企业都受到利润动机的强烈驱动，许多具有同样强烈动机的强大参与者必然会向同一个方向拉动，而没有强大的反作用力向其他方向拉动。
Commonality of agency comes from a company being large, which gives it added incentive to shape its environment.
代理的共性来自于公司规模较大，这给了公司塑造环境的额外动力。
One $1 billion company will do much more environment-shaping than a hundred $10 million companies.
一家价值 10 亿美元的公司比 100 家价值 1000 万美元的公司在塑造环境方面所做的努力要多得多。
It also creates more homogeneity: Starbucks adds far more to any "feeling of urban homogeneity" than a hundred of its 100x-smaller competitors put together.
它还创造了更多的同质性：星巴克对“城市同质感”的增强程度远远超过一百家比其小 100 倍的竞争对手的总和。
Investors can amplify both dynamics.
投资者可以放大这两种动力。
While a (non-sociopathic) startup founder would be happier if their company grows to $1b and helps the world than if it grows to $50b and breaks it ($49b of yachts and planes are NOT worth the world hating you), investors are much further removed from non-financial consequences of their decisions.
虽然（非反社会的）初创公司创始人如果他们的公司增长到 10 亿美元并帮助世界，会比增长到 500 亿美元并打破它更快乐（490 亿美元的游艇和飞机不值得全世界讨厌你），但投资者更远离他们的决定的非财务后果。
As the market becomes competitive, investors willing to seek out the $50b get higher returns, and the ones who are content to only take $1b get lower (if not negative) returns and have a hard time attracting capital.
随着市场变得竞争激烈，愿意寻求 50b 美元的投资者会获得更高的回报，而那些只满足于 10 亿美元的投资者会得到较低的（如果不是负数）回报，并且很难吸引资本。
Additionally, investors who have shares in many portfolio companies can often passively encourage those companies to operate at least partially like a merged collective super-agent .
此外，拥有许多投资组合公司股份的投资者通常可以被动地鼓励这些公司至少部分地像合并后的集体超级代理人一样运作。
An important limiting factor to both dynamics is the limit to investors' ability to surveil what is going on inside their portfolio companies and "hold people accountable".
这两种动态的一个重要限制因素是投资者监控其投资组合公司内部发生的情况并“追究人们责任”的能力受到限制。
Meanwhile, market competition addresses commonality of agency, but it only addresses commonality of motive to the extent that the different competitors have different, not-just-profit-seeking, motives.
与此同时，市场竞争解决了代理的共性，但它只解决了动机的共性，因为不同的竞争者有不同的动机，而不仅仅是追求利润。
Often, they do: companies frequently sacrifice on profits in the name of releasing innovations openly to the public, or upholding deeply held values, or aesthetics.
通常，他们会这样做：公司经常以向公众公开发布创新或维护根深蒂固的价值观或美学的名义牺牲利润。
But this is not guaranteed.
但这并不能保证。
If commonality of motive and commonality of agency create soullessness, then what is "soul"?
如果动机的共性和能动性的共性造成了无灵魂，那么什么是“灵魂”？
I would argue that the definition of "soul" here is nothing other than pluralism : in this context, it is the set of things in corporations that is not homogeneous between them.
我认为这里“灵魂”的定义只不过是多元化：在这种情况下，它是公司中不同质的事物集合。
When people talk positively about "civil society" - the part of society that is not profit-motivated and is not government - they always talk about it as being made up of a huge number of independent institutions that are all doing different things.
当人们积极谈论“公民社会”——社会中不以利润为动机、也不是政府的部分——时，他们总是说它是由大量做不同事情的独立机构组成的。
When I ask AI to explain "civil society" to me, it gives these kinds of examples:
当我让 AI 向我解释“公民社会”时，它给出了这些例子：
When people talk negatively about populism , they tend to envision the opposite: a single charismatic leader who is able to arouse millions of people to directly listen to them and join in a giant mob all pursuing one single goal.
当人们负面谈论民粹主义时，他们往往会想到相反的情况：一个有魅力的领导人能够唤醒数百万人直接倾听他们的声音，并加入一大群人，都追求一个目标。
Populism is about the "common people", but more specifically it is about a fiction that the common people are united - and often, united in support of a leader and in opposition to a hated outgroup.
民粹主义是关于“普通民众”的，但更具体地说，它是关于普通民众团结起来的一种虚构——而且往往是团结起来支持领导人并反对可憎的外群体。
When people do criticize civil society, the argument is invariably that it's failing at its mission to be "a huge number of independent institutions that are all doing different things", and is instead driving some emergent common agenda, eg.
当人们批评公民社会时，他们的论点总是认为它未能履行其成为“大量做不同事情的独立机构”的使命，而是推动了一些新兴的共同议程，例如。
" The Cathedral ".
“大教堂”。
In all of the cases above, we talked about balance of power within each of the three big "forces".
在上述所有案例中，我们都讨论了三大“力量”内部的力量平衡。
But we can also have balance of power between forces.
但我们也可以在力量之间实现力量平衡。
A major example is the balance of power between government and business.
一个重要的例子是政府和企业之间的权力平衡。
Capitalist democracy can be described as a theory of balance of power between Big Government and Big Business: entrepreneurs both get legal tools to challenge aggressive government action, and get a concentration of capital with which they can act independently, but at the same time governments can regulate corporations.
资本主义民主可以被描述为大政府和大企业之间的权力平衡理论：企业家既获得法律工具来挑战激进的政府行为，又获得可以独立行动的资本集中度，但同时政府可以监管公司。
Palladium -ism lionizes billionaires, but specifically when they go off and do unconventional crazy things in pursuit of their own detailed visions, rather than directly seeking profit (see eg.
钯金主义崇拜亿万富翁，但特别是当他们为了追求自己的详细愿景而不是直接寻求利润而去做非传统的疯狂事情时（参见例如
[1] [2] [3] ).
[1] [2] [3]）。
In this way one can view Palladium-ism as an attempt to thread the needle and get the best parts of capitalism without the worst.
通过这种方式，人们可以将钯主义视为一种试图穿针引线并获得资本主义最好的部分而没有最坏的部分的尝试。
Although both were crucial in setting the conditions to enable it, ultimately Starship was created neither by profit motive nor by government mandate.
尽管两者对于创造条件都至关重要，但最终星舰的创建既不是出于利润动机，也不是出于政府授权。
My own views toward philanthropy are similar to Palladium-ism in some ways.
我自己对慈善事业的看法在某些方面与钯主义相似。
I have said many things that stridently support billionaire philanthropy , and I want more of it .
我已经说过很多强烈支持亿万富翁慈善事业的言论，而且我还想表达更多。
But the type of it that I want is the type that counterbalances other forces in society.
但我想要的类型是能够平衡社会中其他力量的类型。
Markets are often not willing to fund public goods, governments are often not willing to fund things that are not yet elite consensus, or things whose beneficiaries are not concentrated in any single countries.
市场往往不愿意为公共产品提供资金，政府往往不愿意为尚未达成精英共识的事物或受益者不集中在任何单一国家的事物提供资金。
Some things are in both categories at the same time, and so get passed over by both.
有些东西同时属于这两个类别，因此会被两者忽略。
Wealthy individuals can fill the gap.
富有的人可以填补这一空白。
But there is a way in which billionaire philanthropy can become harmful: when it stops being a counterbalance to government, and instead takes over the government.
但亿万富翁的慈善事业在某种程度上可能会变得有害：当它不再制衡政府，而是接管政府时。
This has happened in Silicon Valley in the last few years: powerful tech CEOs and VCs have become much less libertarian and supportive of " exit ", and more engaged in directly pushing the government to align with their preferred ends - and in exchange, making the world's most powerful governments even more powerful.
过去几年硅谷就发生了这种情况：强大的科技公司首席执行官和风险投资家变得不再那么自由主义和支持“退出”，而是更多地参与直接推动政府与他们偏好的目标保持一致——作为交换，让世界上最强大的政府变得更加强大。
I much prefer the thing on the left (2013) to the thing on the right (2025), because the thing on the left is an expression of balance of power, whereas the thing on the right represents two extremely powerful factions who should be balancing each other instead merging together.
我更喜欢左边的东西（2013年）而不是右边的东西（2025年），因为左边的东西是权力平衡的表现，而右边的东西代表两个极其强大的派系，他们应该互相制衡而不是合并在一起。
You can also have balance of power between the other two forces in the triangle.
您还可以在三角形中的其他两种力量之间实现力量平衡。
The Enlightenment-era idea of the Fourth Estate was precisely about civil society as a check on government power (meanwhile, even in the absence of any censorship, lots of power goes in the other direction: the government funds schools and universities and can do a lot to shape the content of especially the former).
启蒙时代第四等级的理念正是将公民社会视为对政府权力的制衡（同时，即使没有任何审查制度，许多权力也会流向另一个方向：政府资助学校和大学，并且可以做很多事情来塑造尤其是前者的内容）。
The media reports on business, meanwhile successful business figures frequently fund the media.
媒体报道商业，同时成功的商业人物也经常资助媒体。
These mechanics are all healthy and add robustness to society, as long as one direction of flow does not overpower the others.
只要一个方向的流动不压倒其他方向，这些机制都是健康的，并为社会增添活力。
If there is one argument that explains both the rise of America in the 20ᵗʰ century and the rise of China in the 21st, it's a simple one: economies of scale.
如果有一个论点可以解释 20 世纪美国的崛起和 21 世纪中国的崛起，那么这个论点很简单：规模经济。
This is something that people in both places often bring up as a criticism of places like Europe: there are many small and medium-sized countries with different cultures and languages and institutions, and so it's difficult to create businesses that operate across the continent.
这是两国人民经常提出的对欧洲等地的批评：中小国家众多，文化、语言和制度各异，因此很难创建跨欧洲大陆经营的企业。
Meanwhile, in a large homogeneous country, you can easily scale to hundreds of millions of people.
同时，在一个同质化的大国，您可以轻松扩展到数亿人口。
Economies of scale are a big deal.
规模经济是一件大事。
And at the level of humanity , we want economies of scale because they are by far the most effective way to make progress.
在人类层面，我们需要规模经济，因为它们是迄今为止取得进步的最有效方式。
But economies of scale are a double edged sword: if I have 2x the resources that you do, I will be able to make more than 2x the progress.
但规模经济是一把双刃剑：如果我拥有两倍于你的资源，我将能够取得两倍以上的进步。
Hence, next year, I will have eg.
因此，明年，我将有例如。
2.02x the resources that you do.
2.02 倍的资源。
Hence, eventually, the most powerful actor controls everything.
因此，最终，最强大的演员控制了一切。
Left: proportional growth.
左：比例增长。
Small differences at the start become small differences at the end.
开始时的小差异最终会变成小差异。
Right: growth with economies of scale.
右：规模经济增长。
Small differences at the start become very large differences over time.
随着时间的推移，一开始的微小差异会变成非常大的差异。
Historically, there have been two pressures counterbalancing economies of scale, and preventing this kind of effect:
从历史上看，存在两个平衡规模经济并防止这种效应的压力：
If the cheetah is ahead of the turtle, the first effect makes the cheetah go slower, and the second effect acts like a rubber hand pulling the turtle forward closer to the cheetah.
如果猎豹在乌龟前面，第一个效应会使猎豹走得更慢，第二个效应就像橡皮手一样将乌龟向前拉近猎豹。
But recently, a few key forces are affecting this balance:
但最近，一些关键力量正在影响这种平衡：
Basically, economies of scale are going up, and while diffusion of ideas is probably higher than before due to internet communication, diffusion of control is lower than before.
基本上，规模经济正在上升，虽然由于互联网通信，思想的传播可能比以前更高，但控制的传播却比以前更低。
The conundrum: how do we have a flourishing civilization in the 21ˢᵗ century, with rapid progress, without extreme concentration of power?
难题是：我们如何在21世纪拥有繁荣的文明、快速的进步，而不是权力的极度集中？
What does "mandate more diffusion" mean?
“强制扩散”是什么意思？
First, a few government policy examples:
首先，举几个政府政策的例子：
We can also come up with other ideas in this direction: for example, we could imagine governments making mechanisms inspired by the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism , but charging the tax on (domestic or foreign) products in proportion to some measure of how proprietary a product is: if you share the technology with us, including by open-sourcing it, the tax drops to zero.
我们还可以在这个方向上提出其他想法：例如，我们可以想象政府制定受欧盟碳边界调整机制启发的机制，但根据产品专有程度的某种程度对（国内或国外）产品征税：如果你与我们分享技术，包括通过开源，税收就会降至零。
Another idea that should be brought back is Harberger taxes on intellectual property .
另一个应该恢复的想法是对知识产权征收哈伯格税。
But there is also a more "chaotic" strategy that we should use much more: adversarial interoperability .
但还有一种更“混乱”的策略我们应该更多地使用：对抗性互操作性。
[Adversarial interoperability is] when you create a new product or service that plugs into the existing ones without the permission of the companies that make them.
[对抗性互操作性]是指您在未经制造公司许可的情况下创建了一种新产品或服务，该产品或服务可以插入现有产品或服务中。
Think of third-party printer ink, alternative app stores, or independent repair shops that use compatible parts from rival manufacturers to fix your car or your phone or your tractor.
想想第三方打印机墨水、替代应用程序商店或独立维修店，它们使用竞争对手制造商的兼容零件来修理您的汽车、手机或拖拉机。
Basically, interact with technology platforms, social media websites, businesses and countries in ways that let you benefit from the value that they are creating, without their permission.
基本上，与技术平台、社交媒体网站、企业和国家互动的方式可以让你在未经他们许可的情况下从他们创造的价值中受益。
In general, much value capture in web2 is at the level of the user interface, and so if you can make alternative interfaces that are still interoperable with the platform and its other users using the existing interface, then you can remain part of the network, but opt out of its value capture.
一般来说，web2 中的许多价值捕获是在用户界面级别上进行的，因此，如果您可以制作仍然可以与平台及其使用现有界面的其他用户互操作的替代接口，那么您可以保留网络的一部分，但选择退出其价值捕获。
Sci-Hub , a tool of mandatory diffusion that has arguably done a lot to improve fairness and open access in science.
Sci-Hub，一种强制传播的工具，可以说在提高科学的公平性和开放获取方面做了很多工作。
A third strategy to increase diffusion is to get back to Glen Weyl and Audrey Tang's ideas on Plurality .
增加传播的第三个策略是回到 Glen Weyl 和 Audrey Tang 关于多元化的想法。
They describe these ideas as being about enabling "cooperation across difference" - ways to have better discussions, and collaboration, between people who disagree or have different goals, and gain the efficiencies of being part of a larger group, without having the downsides of being a larger group that is then a single goal-directed agent.
他们将这些想法描述为“跨越差异的合作”——在不同意见或有不同目标的人之间进行更好的讨论和协作，并获得作为一个更大的团体的一部分的效率，而不会有作为一个更大的团体，然后是一个单一的目标导向的代理的缺点。
Ideas like this can enable open-source communities, collections of countries, and other groups that are not actors to have higher levels of diffusion between each other, allowing them to share more economies of scale and remain competitive with more internally organized centralized behemoths.
这样的想法可以使开源社区、国家集合和其他非参与者群体之间的扩散程度更高，从而使它们能够分享更多的规模经济，并与更多内部组织的中心化庞然大物保持竞争力。
Note that this is all structurally similar to Piketty's r > g concept and his desire to solve it with a global wealth tax (and on the other end, stronger public services).
请注意，这在结构上与皮凯蒂的 r > g 概念以及他通过全球财富税（以及更强大的公共服务）解决该问题的愿望非常相似。
The key difference is that instead of focusing on "wealth", we are going one step upstream and focusing on the generators of unbounded wealth concentration - diffusing not dollars, but the means of production.
关键的区别在于，我们不再关注“财富”，而是向上游迈出了一步，关注无限财富集中的产生者——扩散的不是美元，而是生产资料。
I would argue that this approach is better because it more directly targets the dangerous thing (extreme growth coupled with exclusion), and if done well it can even be efficiency-increasing.
我认为这种方法更好，因为它更直接地针对危险的事情（极端增长加上排斥），如果做得好，甚至可以提高效率。
It also has the advantage that it does not limit itself to targeting one type of power.
它还有一个优点，即它不局限于针对一种类型的力量。
While a global wealth tax may prevent concentration of power among billionaires, it would do nothing against powerful dictatorial governments or other transnational entities, and it would perhaps leave us even more defenseless against them.
虽然全球财富税可能会阻止亿万富翁的权力集中，但它对强大的独裁政府或其他跨国实体无济于事，而且可能会让我们在面对他们时更加毫无防备。
A global decentralized strategy of forcing technological diffusion - telling people "either you grow with us, and share access to your secret sauce and your network on a reasonable schedule, or you grow entirely alone, and we shut you out" - would address power concentration in a different way.
强制技术扩散的全球去中心化战略——告诉人们“要么你与我们一起成长，并在合理的时间表上分享你的秘密武器和网络，要么你完全独自成长，我们将你拒之门外”——将以不同的方式解决权力集中问题。
A theoretical risk of pluralism is the vulnerable world hypothesis : the possibility that we live in a world where as technology advances, a growing number of actors will be able to cause catastrophic harm to everyone.
多元化的一个理论上的风险是脆弱世界假说：我们生活在一个这样的世界，随着技术的进步，越来越多的行为者将能够对每个人造成灾难性的伤害。
The less coordinated the world is, the more likely it is that one of them will end up wanting to do this.
世界越不协调，其中一个人最终想要这样做的可能性就越大。
The only solution, according to some, is to concentrate power more .
一些人认为，唯一的解决办法是更加集中权力。
This post argued for concentrating power less.
这篇文章主张减少权力集中。
d/acc ( [1] [2] ) is a complementary strategy that makes concentrating power less safer.
d/acc ( [1] [2] ) 是一种补充策略，会降低集中力量的安全性。
It involves building defensive technology that keeps pace with offense, in a way that is open and available to everyone, reducing the need to concentrate out of fear over security.
它涉及以一种开放且可供所有人使用的方式构建与进攻同步的防御技术，从而减少因对安全的恐惧而集中注意力的需要。
A synthesis morality focused on balance of power might say: you are not allowed to be hegemonic , but you are encouraged to be impactful , and to empower others.
注重权力平衡的综合道德可能会说：不允许你成为霸权者，但鼓励你发挥影响力，并赋予他人权力。
This is another way of phrasing the "power to" vs "power over" distinction, which has existed for centuries.
这是“权力”与“权力高于”区别的另一种表达方式，这种区别已经存在了几个世纪。
One way to have power to without power over is to have high diffusion toward the outside world.
拥有权力而不被超越的一种方法是向外部世界进行高度扩散。
Another way to have power to without power over is to build something which minimizes its ability to be used as a lever of power.
拥有权力而不被超越的另一种方法是构建某种东西，最大限度地减少其作为权力杠杆的能力。
In Ethereum, one good example of this is the decentralized staking pool Lido.
在以太坊中，去中心化质押池 Lido 就是一个很好的例子。
Lido has about 24% of the total ETH staked supply today, but people are much less scared of it than of they would be of almost anything else having 24% of the stake.
如今，Lido 拥有 ETH 抵押总供应量的 24% 左右，但人们对它的恐惧远不如对拥有 24% 股份的几乎任何其他东西的恐惧要少得多。
This is because Lido is not a single actor: it is an internally decentralized DAO with several dozen operators, and a " dual governance " design that gives staked ETH holders the ability to veto decisions.
这是因为 Lido 不是单一参与者：它是一个内部去中心化的 DAO，拥有数十个运营商，并且采用“双重治理”设计，赋予质押的 ETH 持有者否决决策的能力。
Lido deserves credit for putting significant effort in this direction.
丽都在这个方向上付出的巨大努力值得赞扬。
At the same time, of course, the Ethereum community has been insistent that even with these safeguards, Lido should not control all of Ethereum's stake - and today it's very far from that.
当然，与此同时，以太坊社区一直坚持认为，即使有这些保障措施，Lido 也不应该控制以太坊的所有股份——而今天，情况与此相去甚远。
More projects should explicitly think about not just a "business model" - how they bring in resources to support the work that they are doing - but also a "decentralization model" - how they avoid concentrating power in themselves, and the risks associated with having such power .
更多的项目不仅应该明确考虑“商业模式”——如何引入资源来支持他们正在做的工作——还应该考虑“去中心化模式”——如何避免权力集中在自己身上，以及与拥有这种权力相关的风险。
There are some cases where decentralization is easy: relatively few mind the dominance of the English language, or much less that of open protocols like TCP, IP and HTTP.
在某些情况下，去中心化是很容易的：很少有人介意英语的主导地位，更不用说像 TCP、IP 和 HTTP 这样的开放协议了。
In other cases, decentralization is hard because the use case demands intentionality and ability to act in some situations.
在其他情况下，去中心化很困难，因为用例需要在某些情况下采取行动的意图和能力。
Figuring out how to get the upsides of flexibility without the downsides will be an important challenge for a long time to come.
弄清楚如何获得灵活性的优点而不带来缺点将是未来很长一段时间内的一个重要挑战。