> my landlord and my city are both subject to laws from a national government, and if they're egregiously misbehaving, the national government can step in, but they usually don't
On the other hand, your city is also subject to its constituents, who care more about what happens there than people in the nation's capital do, so you already have a mechanism to hold them to account when they misbehave. (And the city has jurisdiction over the local landlords.)
Meanwhile, what do you do if the national government is doing something that ruins your life, but there aren't enough similarly situated people to get them to stop? If it was only a city you could at least move.
> if I switch landlords, let alone cities, my address changes
This is costly. It could still be less costly than having nowhere to hide from policies that cause you significant harm, which makes the availability of that option very valuable.
> I can choose a landlord and to a lesser extent a city by reputation, but I might end up choosing a city because it's where I want to be for business etc. reasons, even if I disagree with its leadership choices
It's all trade offs. If you really want to be there for business reasons and mildly dislike their policies then you might go there anyway. If there are minor business reasons they're preferable but their policies make your life unlivable you might go somewhere else. This is still better than having the unlivable policies imposed nationally, whereupon you would choose your location for business reasons (because the ruinous policy is everywhere), but still have a worse life than having to move to avoid bad policies, because then you'd at least have actually avoided them.
> I have limited ability to influence my city's decision-making and essentially no ability to influence my nation's decision-making, but it's not unheard of
It's not a binary matter of impossibility, it's a matter of difficulty level. Getting your city to do something is a lot easier than getting your whole country to do it, and they're more likely to be receptive to local problems because a larger percentage of their constituents are affected by them.
> Which all seems very similar to having a choice of registrar, limited choice of TLD/registry, no choice in ICANN, the theoretical (and practical, in this case) ability to influence ICANN, and the ability to change registrars and TLDs if I like.
It's not the wrong analogy, the question is how much (if any) of the authority actually has to be in ICANN. You could in theory give them no power at all, or have them not exist, and rest control of each gTLD entirely with its respective registrar.
I could even turn it around and say that the problem here is that the .org registry is itself too centralized and once it delegates a name to someone it should cease to be under the registrar's control and become permanently under the control of the domain owner, so that who owns .org would only matter to new registrants and not existing ones who already have their delegations.
I agree that all of these things are bad - my point is that it's the worst system except for all the others.
Neither of your proposed replacement systems seem like they'd make things overall better with regards to the actual concerns of .org domain name owners.
> My landlord and my city are both subject to laws from a national government, and if they're egregiously misbehaving, the national government can step in, but they usually don't.
It looks like a bait-and-switch by trying to perform some comparison to a non-centralized authority while invoking it (using the odd "national government" phrase) in the same breath.
> The fact that the central authority made the right call in this instance doesn’t ultimately mean that the central authority isn’t still dangerous.
> I hope this serves as a wake-up call to everyone who got scared by this.
In this comment, "central authority" means ICANN, who has oversight over registry operations, not the .org registry themselves.
I am reading this comment as saying that the very idea of having a centralized authority like ICANN is dangerous and we need something else (like a blockchain or whatever). I am claiming that it's fine because the alternatives are all worse.
The next comment tried to say, well, in the case of physical housing, your landlord or city doesn't have total control. But the landlord or city is not in the place of the "central authority" here - they are analogous to a registrar or registry. In the same way that my national government is flawed but better than not having one, ICANN is flawed but better than not having it.
On the other hand, your city is also subject to its constituents, who care more about what happens there than people in the nation's capital do, so you already have a mechanism to hold them to account when they misbehave. (And the city has jurisdiction over the local landlords.)
Meanwhile, what do you do if the national government is doing something that ruins your life, but there aren't enough similarly situated people to get them to stop? If it was only a city you could at least move.
> if I switch landlords, let alone cities, my address changes
This is costly. It could still be less costly than having nowhere to hide from policies that cause you significant harm, which makes the availability of that option very valuable.
> I can choose a landlord and to a lesser extent a city by reputation, but I might end up choosing a city because it's where I want to be for business etc. reasons, even if I disagree with its leadership choices
It's all trade offs. If you really want to be there for business reasons and mildly dislike their policies then you might go there anyway. If there are minor business reasons they're preferable but their policies make your life unlivable you might go somewhere else. This is still better than having the unlivable policies imposed nationally, whereupon you would choose your location for business reasons (because the ruinous policy is everywhere), but still have a worse life than having to move to avoid bad policies, because then you'd at least have actually avoided them.
> I have limited ability to influence my city's decision-making and essentially no ability to influence my nation's decision-making, but it's not unheard of
It's not a binary matter of impossibility, it's a matter of difficulty level. Getting your city to do something is a lot easier than getting your whole country to do it, and they're more likely to be receptive to local problems because a larger percentage of their constituents are affected by them.
> Which all seems very similar to having a choice of registrar, limited choice of TLD/registry, no choice in ICANN, the theoretical (and practical, in this case) ability to influence ICANN, and the ability to change registrars and TLDs if I like.
It's not the wrong analogy, the question is how much (if any) of the authority actually has to be in ICANN. You could in theory give them no power at all, or have them not exist, and rest control of each gTLD entirely with its respective registrar.
I could even turn it around and say that the problem here is that the .org registry is itself too centralized and once it delegates a name to someone it should cease to be under the registrar's control and become permanently under the control of the domain owner, so that who owns .org would only matter to new registrants and not existing ones who already have their delegations.