Ross Douthat is author of ''The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success'', which, when read along with ''Amusing Ourselves To Death'' by Neil Postman, might put a lump in your throat in the face of today's rampantly compulsive tech broligarchs and their enshittification of society.
Palantir turning into a movie villain caricature on the internet through breathless journalism is a great example of "Amusing Ourselves To Death". Journalists turned it into a great story that sounds straight out of a thriller TV show. But trying to spin unchecked growth in government power, a lack of accountability, and mindless consumerism as some sort of side effect of the new cabal of tech-bro elites rather than a persistent drumbeat that existed well before that is an unhelpful distraction that only makes people feel helpless.
Nobody sells books by saying that our issues are a result of general neglect by society as a whole, only movie villains push numbers.
Consider that the current vice president has agreed with Curtis Yarvin saying things like we need to get over our dictator phobia and replace the government. I don't think that can be hand-waved as business as usual. The next phase in the persistent drumbeat, maybe, but it's a big step.
I would agree with you if it weren't proven fact that Thiel is a kingmaker - he created the current JD Vance turning him from being Anti-Trump ("I believe he is a bad man") to vice president with a Girardian mission in just 8 years. He is a demagogue and dangerous.
> I am having a hard time thinking of a mode of power that isn’t far more centralized today than it was just 2, 4, 6, 8, … years ago.
Electrical power. That used to be almost entirely centralised, but it's increasingly easy to be off-grid.
Manufacturing power. I don't know the full dynamics, but there's clearly a lot of cheap good tools easily available, so the term "cottage industry" still makes literal sense.
Comms. Twitter becoming X pushed a lot of decentralised alternatives with similar vibes.
That said, if you go back 20 years, you get the pre-Facebook world and the pre-Twitter world for comms, but you lose cheap good home 3D printing and a specific district in China was becoming the obvious heavily centralised place for all modern consumer electronics to get made.
Of course, go back to 1800 and you get something like, IDK, 70% of the world's internationally traded cutlery being made in Sheffield? I may be off by a lot there, that's just a rough guess given its dominance.
The percentage of goods manufactured in the world that come from the set of the top 5 or top 10 or top 100 or top 1000 sources have all increased today relative to before.
I agree on electricity though. Cheap solar panels have made distributed energy possible in a way that was unimaginable even 20 years ago.
In a sibling comment, I point out that increasing long tails are not incompatible with overall mass centralization.
Relevant to your comment, increases in 3D printing capabilities have not translated into a reversal of manufacturing centralization in China’s favor.
That centralization continues as instability (often defended as an attempt to act against centralization) has perversely disrupted and pulled back manufacturing investment elsewhere.
As an individual, you may be able to do more, or choose from more niches. Even as the vast majority of resources and impact flow to fewer entities by volume.
That is a very good point. Long tails exist. And many long tails continue to grow.
But the mass of everything keeps centralizing.
So the two are not contradictory. Together they imply an increasing dearth of middle diversity/distribution of choices and players.
Increased choices (the menu) can happen at the same time as decreased diversity of choice (flocking, herding) or capacity (sourcing).
So I don’t think you are wrong, despite centralization still being overwhelming.
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Despite 3D printers, manufacturing in particular has been centralizing in China for decades, and this trend has only increased over the last year as politics and economic instability have hampered manufacturing investment outside China.
Being able to print anything, doesn’t turn around economics and structure that hamper creating major supply chains and new manufacturing centers.
Anymore more than being able to write and publish, and an increase in voices, is turning back the general tide of people en masse viewing/reading and self-exposing themselves to fewer uncoordinated voices.
Economic power is centralizing in fewer mega corporations and in the hands of an increasingly dominant economic minority.
Tech business power in capitalization and sources for the best components is centralizing.
Political parties power is centralizing. Very dramatic changes relative to previous decentralization between different party scales, like local vs. Federal. And far more “personal” centralization like has happened at the top in US parties.
Especially in the US, dramatic power centralization across all three branches of government, over the top of the checks and balances, and intended competing roles, that maintain the US Constitution’s relevance as a constraint on autocracy.
Social media over the last two decades has greatly centralized communication and media. And most of all, popular influence.
That power grows despite the emergence of decentralized alternatives. A reversal in favor of decentralization overall would be welcome.
The creation of huge centralized governmental and corporate caches of deeper and richer surveillance information, is a massive submerged centralization of power.
Device lockdowns on outside ecosystem software continues to increase, relative to the typical consumer.
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Long tails operate at the fringes, and matter to many. But they are not slowing down overall economic, technological, social and political centralization.
This video from the Norwegian Consumer Council is an absurdist take on the gradual deterioration, of digital products and services known as ''enshittification''.
First, formation flying is difficult under most circumstances, let alone with giant fuel tankers in a combat zone. White knuckle stuff if you watch enough air-to-air refuelling videos. Any tanker-jet drivers out there to comment?
Second, one of the aircraft had a second crew aboard in training, which is unsettling given the above, and that there are numerous non-combat theatres in which trainees could be accomodated rather than in a combat zone.
Right up into the 1980s, a new, basic-level North American truck usually had 2 doors, a straight six engine with a single barrel carburetor, and a manual transmission with a three-on-the-tree stick shift or maybe four-on-the-floor (an inconvenience for dating couples). Power steering and brakes? Not standard until the 1970s. Radio? Maybe an AM prior to the 1980s. If you wanted a bigger engine, an automatic trans, 4x4, tinted glass, air conditioning, cruise control, power door locks and windows etc. the price went up and up. My point is that you could still buy a ''buckboard'', like my old 1971 GMC of long ago. It was affordable back then and was good enough for what I needed.
The Japanese manufacturers stepped in to the small truck niche, with the most basic models having minimal standard equipment, and by the 1970s were having great success. Now, those ''small buckboard'' class of trucks is long gone.
Nowadays, unless you can buy a new fleet model truck in white with minimal equipment, you're faced with a long list of standard items that all combine to raise the price, regardless of whether you do not desire all that stuff.
> Assuming those Americans want to live in a highly liberal country.
Also citizenship and residence are not the same. As for that political view, the article deals directly with motivations for why Canadian citizenship via this new process has become popular.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...
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