Hyper centralization looks superficially similar to a healthy ecosystem.

But it's the kayfabe of competition.

An ecosystem where the key aliveness that makes it antifragile is dead, leaving an efficient, brittle husk.

The efficiency gains are real and significant, but they come at the cost of the indirect health of the system (its ability to innovate and adapt) being reduced.

Let's dive into one specific notional example.

Independent coffee shops used to be a third place.

A place that isn't home or work for members of the community to congregate and interact.

The owner of each shop, since they are an owner, is more likely to have an "owner mindset", to create a place to hang out that was an anchor for the community.

The owner mindset is more likely to invest in things with indirect benefits.

A franchise owner is more like a renter mindset; can't change much if corporate doesn't let them.

But now imagine every coffee shop is owned by one company.

The system is now in a supercritical state, right on the edge of an instantaneous state change.

Now, some MBA at that company goes "people hanging out here isn't helping the bottom line" so proposes having a policy of "buy a coffee or GET OUT".

This is rolled out nationwide instantly, and now collapses all third places at once, systemically.

Whereas when they were independent, many coffee shop owners might have made different decisions, and we wouldn't lose all of the third places at once.

But now a single boneheaded decision could destroy all third places in the country in a snap.

This is just one example, but this kind of centralization has happened in nearly every industry in the past few decades.