If he had a unifying principle, politically and economically, it is what we have said: that concentrated power in any form is dangerous, that institutions should be built to human scale, and society should pursue human ends. Every institution, public and private, runs the risks of taking on a life of its own, putting its own interests above those o

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Things tend to get worse as they scale. As startups turn to large corporations, they empty of meaning. The tight social bonds of a village fail in the big city. What goes wrong?

Consumer demand for smaller scale and human-crafted versions of everything will grow in an AI world. While the future of work might lend itself to small business creation, let’s ****not forget the demand side of the equation. We are going to crave artisanal and story-driven sources and experiences. Why? As every big company floods the zone of our a... See more

As organizations succeed and grow, they become more formalized, more bureaucratic, more careful, more remote from customers, and slower to act. Diseconomies of scale begin to work, overshadowing the cost advantages of size. Overhead grows, decision-making slows. Direct feedback from customers is reduced, filtered, and often ignored. The demon of af

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