And not just tech. In the article I tried to compare it to gardening.

But my initial idea was to compare it two political issues recently in my country. That story was far too unrecognizable though.

The issues are, where a decentralized police, that was governed by local mayors, was replaced by a central police force, governed by national government. Centralization that was sold as being much cheaper and more efficient. The cheaper was a lie, but only because the conversion itself turned out far more difficult. The more efficient is true. But only for a certain part of efficient.

Previously, e.g. mayors could micro target issues that were directly plagueing a small neighborhood. Now, this is still possible, but has to move through layers of bureaucracy first. In many parts, i'm told, it's less efficient. Overall, the sum, however obviously operates more efficient. Instead of each of the thousands of municipalities having some HR, there now is only one. Same for IT, etc etc.

The other issue is exactly reversed: mental service for Youth (youth care) a rather large institute, was decentralized: moved to municipalities. The promise was that this would allow far better detailed care. It is a fiasco, because the national government never considered that it would be far more expensive. They even promised it would cut costs.

Why voters fall for this, and think that both promise can be true (decentralized being more expensive and saving money) is beyond me. But the effect of decentralization on effincy is clearly visible here too.