There’s likely a second crux that influences how one views the extent to which CEA/EVF is a “monopoly” or has extreme advantages. That is whether it is advisible for the same organization (EVF) to be the primary provider of many different kinds of important coordinating functions, or whether that gives it too much power.
If that isn’t a concern, then pointing to the existence and viability of organizations that work in the same spaces at CEA/EVF orgs is a fairly good response.
“Start your own orgs” is still a possible response if one concludes that CEA/EVF’s dominant market position in numerous forms of coordination is a problem. However, I think the difficulty level is raised two orders of magnitude from most of the examples you gave:
The first raise is that the new org has to outcompete the EVF org to displace the latter from its role as the primary provider of the coordination system.
The second raise is that this would need to happen over several different coordinating functions to reduce CEA/EVF’s influence to an appropriate level.
(Although I would prefer a meta with less power concentration, “democratic” is not the primary word I’d use to justify that preference.)
I think that’s one major crux.
There’s likely a second crux that influences how one views the extent to which CEA/EVF is a “monopoly” or has extreme advantages. That is whether it is advisible for the same organization (EVF) to be the primary provider of many different kinds of important coordinating functions, or whether that gives it too much power.
If that isn’t a concern, then pointing to the existence and viability of organizations that work in the same spaces at CEA/EVF orgs is a fairly good response.
“Start your own orgs” is still a possible response if one concludes that CEA/EVF’s dominant market position in numerous forms of coordination is a problem. However, I think the difficulty level is raised two orders of magnitude from most of the examples you gave:
The first raise is that the new org has to outcompete the EVF org to displace the latter from its role as the primary provider of the coordination system.
The second raise is that this would need to happen over several different coordinating functions to reduce CEA/EVF’s influence to an appropriate level.
(Although I would prefer a meta with less power concentration, “democratic” is not the primary word I’d use to justify that preference.)