Well, the obvious solution would be to appoint a temporary supreme leader who, wait a second, he just abolished the republic and appointed himself emperor for life. Nevermind.

Centralized decision making is more efficient than its decentralized alternative, but that would be race to the bottom, the culmination of which would be a society of drones controlled by the central authority in every regard. So decentralization may be a losing position, but I still consider it worth it. The means are the ends.

Also worth noting that asymmetric warfare and guerrilla tactics benefit from the agility afforded by decentralization.