While I sympathize with Tao, I can’t help but think this is the math world reaping what it has sown. There was little holistic about the previous math institutions, to the benefit of a few and the detriment of many. There was little reward for trying something new and failing, for doing something old in a new way, it was results and little else that mattered, the same publish or perish across all academia. And now that these few have found a force they cannot contend with, suddenly we are demanding holism.

They are right at the end of the day, but it still smells of hypocrisy to some degree.

A few years ago congress had a nice solution via a market mechanisms, have sufficiently large banks be required to have their cards support at least 2 card networks, via which the merchant may at at swipe time decide which network to run against. Unfortunately like any good idea, it died in congress.