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Not even civil infrastructure is immune from the decentralization taking place during the "Great Dispersion" rippling through the global economy.

Take water resources, for example. In our moment of scorching temperatures and mega-droughts, water is becoming an increasingly precious commodity everywhere (but nowhere more acutely than in the American West). And by 2050 the UN projects that 5 billion people globally could face water shortages.

Centralized water treatment systems are of course found everywhere (like the world's largest wastewater treatment plant in Orange County, California, which treats 130 million gallons of blackwater daily). But decentralized, "closed-loop" systems would be a gamechanger for the water resources industry, equivalent to installing a rooftop solar system on your house or partnering with an ESCO that allows you to sell electricity back into the grid. Decentralized water resources can reduce overall demand, costs, and stresses on local infrastructure (i.e. no digging up roads for new or upgraded pipes or installing carbon-belching pumping stations).