Venezuela, Iran, and the Case for Decentralized International Action

We already understand why decentralization works in markets and in the public square. Distributed systems are smarter, more adaptive, and harder to corrupt than centralized ones. Millions of actors with skin in the game will always outperform a single committee with a flowchart.

And we also understand the danger of centralized systems: they’re easy to capture. Give enough power to a central authority and, sooner or later, someone with political leverage or institutional interests figures out how to steer it. We saw this during Covid — where centralized control over speech and information didn’t make society wiser or safer. Instead, it allowed governments, platforms, and bureaucracies to suppress dissent, protect reputations, and enforce narratives that later turned out to be false, incomplete, or politically convenient.

Centralization doesn’t just make mistakes bigger — it makes them harder to challenge.

Yet when it comes to behavior — whether inside nations or between them — we suddenly forget everything we know about decentralization. We stop trusting distributed judgment and start insisting that no one should act unless a distant authority signs off first.

But that’s not how healthy societies work.

In a functioning community, people don’t simply “mind their own business” and hope someone files a report later. They step in when something clearly wrong is happening right in front of them. Yes, they may be partly motivated by self-interest — protecting their block, their shop, their peace. But that doesn’t corrupt the moral act. A neighbor who breaks up a violent incident isn’t wrong just because he also prefers not to live near chaos.

Decentralization doesn’t mean anything goes. It polices itself through reputation. Fail to act when you should, and you lose standing. Act foolishly or abusively, and you get publicly humiliated. Markets do this with prices and competition; the public square does it with speech and criticism; behavior does it with honor and reputation. That’s the feedback loop — not permission slips from a central authority.

International law, by contrast, has drifted into a world of centralized moral permission. A dictatorship brutalizes its own population — and we solemnly declare that repression “unlawful.” But intervention to stop it? Also unlawful. So the atrocity is documented, archived, and translated into resolutions… while the world waits for “proper channels,” which never quite arrive.

That isn’t prudence — it’s paralysis dressed up as procedure.

And the irony is that bad actors aren’t waiting for centralized approval anyway. They aren’t sitting around saying, “We’d love to oppress people, but the UN hasn’t cleared the paperwork.” The only people restrained by moral bureaucracy are the ones inclined to act responsibly in the first place. Worse, the system doesn’t just fail to deter tyrants — it encourages them. They know that under a centralized, rules-bound international framework, the odds of anyone meaningfully stepping in are vanishingly small. The very structure of the system signals reassurance: you may face speeches, resolutions, and strongly-worded statements… but almost certainly not consequences.

Meanwhile, the same centralization-capture dynamic we see domestically shows up internationally. Global institutions don’t behave like neutral moral referees; they behave like political systems subject to lobbying, pressure blocs, and coalition power. That’s why some nations become lightning rods for disproportionate rebuke, while others — often far more brutal — slip by with minimal scrutiny. Israel is the clearest example: whatever one thinks of its policies, the sheer volume and intensity of international condemnation aimed at it is wildly out of sync with any consistent moral standard. That isn’t moral clarity — it’s what happens when a centralized structure becomes a battleground for interests.

And this brings us to Venezuela and Iran. These are not abstract test cases — they are real-world laboratories for what happens when tyrannical regimes understand the game. They know the international community will debate, issue statements, and pass symbolic resolutions — and they also know that almost nothing will happen. Centralized moral authority doesn’t restrain them; it reassures them.

If we trust decentralization in economics and speech, we should trust it in moral responsibility as well. Strength doesn’t come from routing all action through a single moral bottleneck. It comes from allowing — and expecting — many actors to exercise judgment when judgment is needed.

Decentralization isn’t risk-free. Neither are markets, conversations, or human beings. But centralized inaction isn’t morally superior. It’s just safer for tyrants — and more comfortable for paperwork.

Civil societies thrive because decent people refuse to look away and wait for authorization. A healthy international community shouldn’t behave any differently.