• federico3@lemmy.ml
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    4 years ago

    Electrical grids across the world have been decentralized since the beginning - hence the name - for various reasons. Resilience: a long distance line can be disconnected due to a fault and the network need to be able to survive the fault without leaving users without power. Maintenance: you need to be able to disconnect the line without cutting power to users. Economics & corporate politics: even if generation or distribution is done by the government in many countries, the companies actually doing the work are often private. You don’t want a single company to have huge bargain power. Also: resilience from air strikes and carpet bombing (yes it’s a concern).

    It’s pretty common for datacenters to be connected to multiple power lines possibly from different providers for reliability.

    If this sounds similar to how the physical Internet is built it’s not unexpected.

    • Nevar@lemmy.ml
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      4 years ago

      Ahh, you’re talking about technical operations. I’m referring to governance. Yes, everything can be looked at in a decentralized way depending on the frame of reference. Good job!

      • federico3@lemmy.ml
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        4 years ago

        As mentioned in other answers, a lot of governance is decentralized (e.g. across different countries) as well.

        • Nevar@lemmy.ml
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          4 years ago

          Just to repeat, what is and what should be are different questions. Gold star for getting the What is part right though!