# kaal:claim:3782198-021

**Claim.** Earlier centralized companies defeated more decentralized peer to peer platforms because of the technology of the time and the incentive design built into capitalist civilization: consumer devices could not match industrial upload speeds, centralized firms had the incentive to polish user interfaces, and economies of scale made central bureaucracy worth negotiating.

**Type.** mechanism  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- describes the competitive conditions of the early internet era

**Source quote.**

> The reason earlier centralized companies succeeded against more decentralized P)P platforms is due to the existing technology of the time and the natural incentive design that is built into our capitalist civilization.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Contemporary Decentralization* (2021), P-P technology, page 19

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Contemporary Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782198

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `e7e1378e3eed06cace6534e7792a7307d607d18bc6beb4ac45896476280728e4` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20Contemporary%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** p2p-latency-and-incentive-disadvantage  (family: recentralization-drift)

**Topics.** risk-and-incentives, economics, decentralization

**Keywords.** p2p, latency, incentive-design, economies-of-scale, centralization

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.