创新需要去中心化与一片前沿Innovation Requires Decentralization and a Frontier
Naval：创新需要具备几样东西。其中必不可少的一样，似乎就是去中心化。
我认为，雅典城邦、意大利城邦，乃至早期的美国——那时它更自由松散，联邦政府的控制更少——之所以成为创新的温床，并非巧合。因为那里存在着大量竞争。如果你的想法在某地不受欢迎，你可以换到另一个城邦去，思想之间的竞争十分激烈。
真正重要的多样性是思想的多样性，而不是肤色的多样性。
你还需要一片"边疆"。你需要有新的东西去探索——无论是思想的边疆，还是物理空间的边疆。我们已经开发了加利福尼亚。如今加州反倒成了建制、成了既得利益集团，不再是"狂野西部"的前沿了。也许我们需要太空这样的边疆，也许我们需要加密货币这样的思想边疆。
"狂野西部"天生如此：那里总是骗子横行、犯罪频发、充斥着各种稀奇古怪的事，因为它吸引的本来就是一群怪人。但与此同时，大量创新也正在那里发生。
我看到很多老派科学家和创业者哀叹："现在的新创业者在哪里受欢迎？"我记得 Y Combinator 创始人保罗·格雷厄姆，一位非常出色的人，发过一条推文，大意是"史蒂夫·乔布斯……和他一样的人，在自己创办的公司里一天都待不下去。"他会被自己的团队"封杀"。
但今天的史蒂夫·乔布斯会去搞加密货币。他会和那些骗子、罪犯和怪人混在一起，但至少在那里，他有空间可以特立独行，有地方可以与众不同，有地方可以尝试新事物，而不必时时向人交代。
集权与去中心化之间，始终有一个来回摆动的钟摆。
比如在加密货币领域，中心化金融最终会变得非常僵化。政府和监管机构规定你什么能做什么不能做，监管俘获随之而来，转眼间华尔街就从经济中抽走了 20% 的利润——而加密货币可以取代这一切。
于是便产生了去中心化的压力，人们可以用自由松散、程序化定义的方式去做事。但这样一来，骗局、欺诈和损失也会多得多。
打个比方：在古代，你担心森林里有土匪强盗，于是向国王求助。国王建起坚固的城堡，铸造货币。可转眼间，国王开始贬值通货、滥发货币，还把人们投进监狱。于是一些人逃进森林，再次沦为绿林好汉——因为他们想要自由。当然，如今他们又要面对同伙的攻击和骚扰。
所以，历史上集权与去中心化之间存在着天然的钟摆式摆动。而我认为，过去十年，技术的走向实际上把钟摆推向了集权一侧。
我是亚马逊的忠实粉丝，但它是一个非常中心化的实体。我认为即使在电商这个行业，去中心化的潮流也在发生。像 Shopify 这样的平台正在崛起，让小店也能参与竞争。DoorDash 这类本地配送服务本身是中心化的，但它们让一大批分散的餐厅和本地商铺得以与中心化服务竞争。
我们会看到这股潮流来回摆动。
Naval: Innovation requires a couple of things. One of the things that it seems to require is decentralization.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Athenian city-states or the Italian city-states or even the United States—when it was more freeform and less federal government controlled—were hotbeds of innovation, because you had lots and lots of competition. People could switch from one state to another if their ideas weren’t welcome, and there was a robust competition of ideas.
The real diversity that matters is the diversity of ideas, not the diversity of skin color.
You also need a frontier. You need something new to explore—either an intellectual frontier or a physical frontier. We’ve occupied California. If anything, now California is the institution, the establishment. It’s no longer the front of the Wild West. Maybe we need one in space. Maybe we need intellectual ones like we have in cryptocurrencies.
It’s the nature of the Wild West that they’re always filled with scammers; they’re always filled with crimes; they’re always filled with very strange and odd things, because they tend to attract a weird crowd. But at the same time, it is where a lot of the innovation is going on.
I see a lot of lamenting from old school scientists and entrepreneurs. “Where are the new entrepreneurs welcome?” I think Paul Graham, the Y Combinator founder, a brilliant guy, tweeted something along the lines of, “Steve Jobs… and people like him wouldn’t last a day inside the companies they created.” He’d be canceled by his own team.
But Steve Jobs today would be in crypto. He’d be in crypto with all the scammers and all the criminals and all the weirdos, but at least there he’d have a space to be weird. He’d have a place to be different. He’d have a place to try new things without having to constantly answer to someone.
There is a pendulum between centralization and decentralization.
For example, if you look at the crypto world, centralized finance ends up very ossified. You have the government and the regulators telling you exactly what you can and can’t do. You get regulatory capture, and next thing you know, Wall Street is sucking 20% of the profits out of the economy—and crypto can replace that.
So you get decentralization pressure where people can do it in a freeform, programmatic way. But then you end up with a lot more scams, fraud and losses as well.
An analogy might be that, in olden times, you worried about brigands and robbers in the forest, so you appealed to the king. The king builds a nice keep, the king mints the money. But next thing you know, the king is debasing the currency and the king is throwing people in jail. Then some people run off into the forest and they become brigands again because they want their freedom. But now, of course, they’re subject to attacks and harassment from their peers.
So there’s a natural pendulum swing that goes on in history between centralization and decentralization, and I think the arc of technology actually swung us towards centralization in the last decade.
I’m a big fan of Amazon, but it’s a very centralized entity. I think that there’s a decentralization arc that is taking place even in that industry. Things like Shopify are coming up and enabling small stores to compete. Local delivery services like DoorDash are centralized services, but they’re allowing a decentralized army of restaurants and local shops to compete against centralized services.
We’re going to see this arc go back and forth.