In reply to Euan.

As transaction costs go down, the need for bureaucracies decreases. Or, as the Cluetrain stated, hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. As Gwynne Dyer wrote on the Arab Spring and on why we have controlling regimes:

"The mass societies had many more decisions to make, and no way of making them in the old, egalitarian way. Their huge numbers made any attempt at discussing the question as equals impossible, so the only ones that survived and flourished were the ones that became brutal hierarchies. Tyranny was the solution to what was essentially a communications problem."