2 min read

Efficiency without uniformity

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Any time you get people together to solve a problem, it complicates things. If you've ever worked in government or a company of sufficient scale, you know this well. Even small companies trying to grow have to work through a serious change in the way they operate. Founders and early employees can't get as much done because they're busy bringing on new people. New people are frustrated by the lack of organization.

We've come to accept that big, important efforts require big, complex organizations.

What if I told you there's another way?

According to a very quick, unverified Google search, 14 billion pencils are produced every year. That's twice the world's population. This task isn't accomplished by a single company. There are lots of brands of pencils to choose from. Importantly, not one of those brands actually makes their pencils from scratch. They buy the various components from suppliers. Someone manufactures the graphite, someone else processes the wood, another company makes the rubber erasers, and another produces the metal ferrule to attach the eraser. And each of those companies has their own suppliers of raw materials. This goes back quite a few layers.

At the beginning of this supply chain is someone cutting down trees. They probably don't know that their product is going to be used for pencils. Yet, they know there's demand for the trees and they will keep supplying them as long as there's a good enough financial incentive to do so. No one had to oversee the entire end-to-end supply chain to ensure everyone was doing their jobs and producing enough to supply 14 billion pencils to the world.

Blockchain is really good at one thing: distributing rewards for doing something valuable. Tech companies won't need to employ (and layoff) hundreds of thousands when they embrace this same market-driven efficiency. You don't need to manage for strict uniformity of the cogs in your machine. Just build on blockchain to connect with people, companies, and automated services that can fill your needs without you needing to hire up and fill them yourself.

-Luke

P.S. Government regulation and legal compliance increase the cost of operating a business. Building a large business allows for efficiencies of scale. Laissez-faire policies allow for these greater market forces to shine and reduce centralization.