Decentralization, or the transfer of power away from a centralized authority, aligns with Thoreau’s ideal of rugged individualism: living, working, building, and creating according to one’s own unique ambitions, desires, and visions. It’s about true freedom, the open road, the possibility of realizing one’s potential and carving a place for oneself in the world with nothing more than grit, sweat, and ingenuity.

This is romantic, idealistic, and frankly, impossible in our modern world.

Despite our call toward individualism, we are also members of a larger social system. To do much of anything, we must rely on and participate in that system — trading money for goods, separating truth from non-truth, and of course, protecting and ensuring the lives we have built within society.

Our ability to flourish depends, at the most basic level, on trust — that everyone else will behave and act according to the tenuous rules and expectations holding society together. We must trust in each other, in our currency, and in our contracts (both official and understood). But trust is a tricky thing. It is difficult, if not impossible, to trust someone you do not know — and even then, trust is easily abused and defrauded. How can we be certain that our information is accurate? That our contracts are honored? That our investments have value?

This is where centralized authorities come in. While we cannot know everyone, these authorities can. And we can, in turn, trust them. They provide a single point of governance and control, helping to verify information and ensure compliance (i.e. everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing). This allows our society to function.

But centralized authorities are prone to corruption. They often abuse power. They are subject to bias and subjectivity. And, as they store and hold the information and data that allows our world to work, they are vulnerable to fraud and attack (thus making us vulnerable to fraud and attack). They make our lives easier and our society possible — but in exchange, we sacrifice our ability to control the shape and nature of our lives (and of course, of our data).

Indeed, our democracy, technology, and even art are defined by a persistent distrust of large, centralized third parties — and by an attempt to minimize their inevitable pitfalls (corruption, abuse of power, and tyranny) while taking advantage of their benefits.

A true dance with devils.

Virginia Woolf noted the need for this distrust and structures to protect individual agency in her essay, “A Room of One’s Own.” She outlined the danger that centralized power poses to creativity and free thought, as well as the importance of privacy and control over one’s individual finances and economy.

Throughout literature, movies, and music, we have celebrated and romanticized the rugged individual, the outlier, the creator — charting his or her own path often in direct opposition to the institutions seeking to control, manage, and mitigate their lives and choices.

George Orwell painted a portrait of a terrifying future in which individuals had sacrificed privacy for the illusion of stability and order. His work was a warning not against a specific line of thought, but against giving a trusted, centralized authority the power to dictate which modes of thought are acceptable.

Jack Kerouac inspired a generation by revealing the possibility of the open road and the allure of active rebellion against outside expectations and social constructions.

As shown by the banking crisis of 2009, the advent of “fake news,” “free speech zones” on college campuses, established and government-approved public school curriculum, political corruption, Facebook’s rampant misuse of data, data breaches, fraud and credit manipulation, and rampant bias and propagation of misinformation within nearly all media outlets (to, of course, inspire outrage and ultimately, ratings), centralized institutions — regardless of intent or vision — will easily succumb to the gravity of power. They will seek to subvert and limit individual freedom and agency in the process.

It’s a vicious cycle: individuals fight for their individuality, then turn to order and structure to mitigate behavior and make society “better,” which leads these authorities to grow and abuse that power (as the world works far better when individuals are not individuals, but cogs in the wheels of production).

You see, individuals’ abilities to choose as a result of their own thinking, in accordance with objective information and the guidance of their own values, logic, and desires, is power. That power is a threat to anyone or anything invested in controlling, dictating, and predicting behavior.

Individual choice is always the problem, from efficiency’s point of view.

This isn’t evil as much as it is practical.

It is, for example, almost impossible to program a self-driving car to recognize and accurately respond to every single possible human behavior. It is far easier to simply limit and better control human behavior.

It is far easier to ensure the functioning and well-oiled machine of governance if a population’s behavior is censored and managed.

It is far easier to build a successful company if you can predict control not only the behavior of your target audience, but the playing field itself through litigation and regulation.

Again, not evil — logical.

(Maybe just a little evil.)