On when hierarchy breadth, depth, and failure points force a return to agent autonomy... #readingToday

At some point, there must be a tipping point in which the conflict of interest between the fragility of all the single points of failure, combined with the difficulty of maintaining tree depth, outweighs the benefit of breaking the structure into hierarchical levels . Then the command and control paradigm breaks down. At this point, one has little option but to return to agent autonomy, under general constraints, as a model of governance. Exactly when that happens, depends on the amount of brute force the tree can exert to keep itself together.

In Search of Certainty, Mark Burgess, 2013