Middlemen everywhere
For home services, Urban Company is the middleman.
For cab rides, Uber is the middleman.
Even for the office staff at our office, there is an agency.
For food delivery, Zomato is the middleman.
What is the issue with middlemen? Donât they add value, havenât they create systems and platforms that make it easier for matchmaking between two parties. Sure, they do. In other cases they also provide more. UC for example, provides training and tools to their service executives. They provide customer support and guarantee a minimum quality of service.
But often they are just in the middle, doing no âlabourâ and just collecting rent, either as a commission or a cut or an increased end user price. You pay a premium when you work through a middleman, and the one doing the labour or providing the service, they get paid less per transaction because of middleman (though they potentially make up for that through higher volumes of business).
You do need intermediaries. Something as simple as Craigslist is an intermediary too, but it doesnât enforce a âplatform tax.â
Can there be a different class of middlemen? That provide the commons but donât aim to profit, or at least profit too much. Like Bookshop.org which has encoded the support of local bookstores into their business model. Or at least could there be alternatives. Both a producer and the customer can go through a middleman and pay their premium or go direct. The kind of choice that Epic has forced Apple to make.
This is a question I would love to dwell upon.