Starting with the assumption that centralized system are generally wasteful compared to decentralized systems [1]: Why does middle-management exist? As a class of worker, I mean. They are a vast body of employees who do nothing directly towards consuming input resources and transforming them into output products and services. They exist solely to organize the people who do real work into a large, hierarchical organization. But to what end?

From a labor and trade perspective, the most efficient transaction is Person A making a thing and Person B buying it directly from Person A. There is no additional overhead of management, transportation, holding stock in display rooms, etc. But it's impossible to make those sorts of connections on the daily, hourly, minutely basis necessary to make an economy flow.

The best answer I've ever gotten was "it's more efficient!" So we've been told, but has anyone checked? And to which, the best answer I've ever received was, "well, it hasn't been disproven." Because of the key role of distribution in an economy, we accept these other inefficiencies.

But is that absolute? I think we are seeing proto-elements of decentralized distribution in sites like Etsy (which serves only to connect producers to customers) and Amazon (which both connects trading entities and performs stock warehousing and shipping for them, but doesn't actually produce anything of their own). We are only now entering an era of eCommerce. Everything before now has been "commerce as it has been since the industrial revolution" just on the Internet.

[1] and I do acknowledge that it is an assumption. But I think it's a stronger position than "bigger is better".