> When you have a billion devices running around the world, you can't say "hey we'll let this arbitrary group of billion people do what they think is best for them", because you then end up with Blaster worm, and the whole Earth falls apart.

The bug is in the fact that billions of machines are running exactly the same proprietary software.

Following the "virus" metaphor, having billions of identical organisms is how you get pandemics, mass die-offs, and extinctions.