Decentralization as a Contributor to Time Value

The broader the context for economic time value, the more that any society can bring to the table, for all of their wants and needs. Decentralized settings for economic activity would particularly make it easier to apply knowledge, in time and location specific context. The unique characteristics of specific circumstance are sometimes discounted, especially when centralized organizational patterns require strict adherence to specific knowledge sets. Excessive centralized patterns of knowledge use, can be likened to a centrifugal force which isolates both social interaction and different fields of endeavor. When decentralized knowledge use options are missing, knowledge loses much of its integrative and dynamic qualities.

In recent decades, populations have lost much of their ability to negotiate time value with others on general terms, at an economic level. As a result, time value in aggregate is also becoming compromised. Even though we often value the time of others more than specific sets of knowledge or skill, we have too few remaining means to compensate one another, on time based terms.

Centralized knowledge use structures continue to atomize (previous) time based services product into automated and specific patterns, which increasingly adhere to patented information. The lower one's income level, the more one may be (consequently) expected to accomplish service tasks, without personal assistance from others - regardless of their ability to help. While highly specialized knowledge use is at least somewhat suited for the population densities of large cities, a high volume of knowledge use specificity is difficult to sustain, elsewhere. As a result, those who don't live in close proximity to large cities, are becoming more isolated from the centers and societal expectations of today's knowledge based wealth.

Fortunately, this problem could be addressed, by tapping new forms of organizational capacity via formal and effective decentralized means. Consider for instance, what tradable sectors have accomplished in recent centuries, through well coordinated divisions of labor which regularly change skill sets according to evolving tasks. These changes require time and circumstance specificity, not knowledge use rigidity. The ability of traditional manufacture to closely coordinate a broad array of time based functions, also made it possible for tradable sectors to thrive for centuries as a self starting component - one which often contributed to further economic complexity.

Services production could potentially self replicate as well, through internally generated coordination of what are normally multiple institutional patterns. These general frameworks for knowledge use, would also mean more flexible divisions of labor. Granted, this level of coordination would have previously been difficult. However, technology has advanced to such an extent, that digital processes would augment group formation so as to compensate for any lack of knowledge based investment, at broader levels. Ultimately, this would allow knowledge use to spread to areas which are in great need of economic complexity. Best, new sources of wealth generation would once again have a chance to thrive, through decentralized means.