I strongly disagree. If you look at protocols like SMTP or Usenet, or how packets are being forwarded or names assigned, that all heavily relies on cooperation. I mean that’s the single reason why we added all the stuff on top over the years. Because the original idea was, it’s a network of cooperating entities. And they didn’t really factor in exploitation and ulterior motives. And all the selfishness of the companies. We would have had far less issues if this wasn’t how it was laid out.

And all the structure emerged from groups of people using and shaping it. It used to be a lot more difficult. You’d be your group and want to interconnect to another group of people. The main point about a network is the interconnections. And back then you couldn’t just plug a cable into the wall yourself and be done with it. That was people paying some excavators and a location in the next exchange. Making peering agreements with other entites and it wasn’t as much about profit as it is today. Or they set up phone lines and the associated infrastructure. They stored and forwarded messages for other people, routed their data, set up exchanges and public boards. All working both for other people and for their own benefit.

Also, there wasn’t any superior entity who told them what to do. They themselves decided what protocols to agree upon, how to do it etc. We got very interesting stories on what they did with problematic central parts like DNS after the internet got too big and it couldn’t be one university doing all the work for the entire country anymore, as it used to be in my country in the early days.