The cloud is an unelected tax — "we need decentralization to avoid feudalism"
More than Decentralised Compute | Converge @ EthCC 2024 (Caladan)
“The a16z did a study… that said something like 50% of your money that you pay for online services goes to a cloud provider that you have no idea who it is. Compute is the fabric that holds a modern society together, and compute is foundation for AI. If you think that you’re going to have to pay a tax to someone that you have no idea who it is, you’re not elected — we used to do that when society was feudalistic. So we need decentralization to avoid feudalism, that’s the simple answer. And we believe compute should be a common good; it should not be in the hands of few.” — 00:07:12
Context: Answering “why do we need decentralized compute?” — his recurring feudalism framing plus the demand for permissionless access (“a world that I’m not willing to accept” is needing massive deals with cloud providers).