There are variable costs to providing resources to the network (I.e. bandwidth, electricity, etc.) beyond the simple fixed (and perhaps already sunk) cost of a hard drive.
If there are no economies of scale it means the network effect is inefficient and broken. What sets SAFE apart is that it democratized entry into and participation in a new form of data economy.
Just like in the agricultural world there are some who have small farms and others who farm at scale. It took thousands of years, but we’ve arrived at a point where it is no longer economically efficient to agriculturally farm unless you do so at some level of scale.
A thriving, evolving SAFE Network will be similar except the barrier of entry should always remain relatively low.
There’s more on this topic of discussion here: Can the SAFE network replace the current internet? and here Massive scale maidsafe farm