You think you're buying directly from the source. You aren't. Whether you're ordering a late-night burrito, booking a flight to Lisbon, or hiring a freelance designer, you're likely paying a "gatekeeper tax" that didn't exist twenty years ago. We've entered a period where the person who makes the thing and the person who wants the thing are separated by a thick, profitable layer of digital infrastructure. It's the age of the middleman. This isn't just about convenience. It’s a fundamental shift in how money moves through the global economy, and it’s making everything more expensive while squeezing the people who actually do the work.
The internet was supposed to kill the middleman. That was the big promise of the nineties. We were told that by connecting everyone, we’d see "disintermediation." Travel agents would vanish. Record labels would become obsolete. Car dealerships would be a relic of the past. For a minute, it looked like it was happening. But humans hate friction. We hate searching through ten different websites to find the best price. We want one button, one interface, and one saved credit card. If you liked this post, you might want to look at: this related article.
The great platform bait and switch
Modern middlemen don't look like the cigar-chomping wholesalers of the twentieth century. They look like clean, minimalist apps on your home screen. They call themselves "platforms" or "marketplaces."
Take Uber Eats or DoorDash. They don't cook food. They don't even technically employ the people who deliver it. They simply own the digital real estate where the transaction happens. For this service, they take a massive cut. A restaurant owner might see 30% of their revenue disappear into the platform's pocket. To survive, the restaurant raises its prices. You pay more, the chef earns less, and the middleman gets a billion-dollar valuation. For another look on this development, refer to the latest coverage from Financial Times.
It's a brilliant, somewhat cynical business model. These companies spend years losing money to subsidize low prices and kill off local competition. Once they're the only game in town, they turn the screws. They become the "discovery" layer. If you aren't on the platform, you don't exist. If you are on the platform, you're paying for the privilege of being found.
Why the discovery tax is the new rent
In the physical world, rent is determined by location. If you want a shop on Fifth Avenue, you pay for the foot traffic. In the digital world, the middleman owns the foot traffic. Google, Amazon, and Meta are the landlords of the internet.
Small businesses now spend a huge chunk of their budget on "Customer Acquisition Cost" (CAC). This is basically just a fancy way of saying they’re paying a middleman to show their product to you. Ten years ago, a direct-to-consumer brand could grow through organic social media. Today? You're basically required to buy ads to reach your own followers.
Apple’s App Store is perhaps the most famous example of this. They take a 15% to 30% cut of digital sales because they control the hardware. They argue they provide security and a "seamless" experience—wait, I shouldn't use that word. They provide a smooth experience. But for developers, it feels like a tax on innovation. When Spotify or Epic Games complains about the "Apple Tax," they're fighting against the ultimate middleman.
The psychology of convenience
Why do we let this happen? Because we're lazy. I'm lazy. You're lazy.
We value our time more than our money, at least in small increments. Saving five minutes by using a curated search engine or a one-click checkout feels like a win. The middleman sells us back our own time. They aggregate choices so we don't have to think.
The problem is that this aggregation leads to homogenization. When one middleman controls what everyone sees, they decide who wins and who loses. The "algorithm" becomes the ultimate arbiter of taste and commerce. If the algorithm likes you, you're rich. If it hides you, you're out of business.
The invisible layers of finance
Middlemen aren't just in your phone. They're deep in the plumbing of the world. Look at the financial sector. Every time you swipe a credit card, a chain of middlemen takes a tiny bite.
- The merchant bank.
- The card network (Visa/Mastercard).
- The issuing bank.
- The payment processor.
Individually, these fees are small—maybe 2% or 3%. Collectively, they represent a massive drain on the economy. In 2023, credit card swipe fees topped $170 billion in the United States alone, according to data from the Merchants Payments Coalition. That’s money that isn't going to the merchant or the consumer. It’s just... gone. Into the machinery of the middle.
Even in the world of "decentralized" finance, we see new middlemen popping up. Crypto exchanges like Coinbase or Binance are just the new versions of the banks they were supposed to replace. They provide the interface. They provide the trust. And they take the fees.
The squeeze on the creator class
If you’re a creator—a writer, a musician, a coder—the age of the middleman is a double-edged sword. You have "access" to a global audience, sure. But the middleman owns that relationship.
Substack is a great example of a modern middleman trying to be "the good guy." They take 10%. It’s better than the old magazine deals where writers got pennies, but it’s still a layer. The real danger is when the platform changes the rules. We saw this with Etsy. They raised seller fees repeatedly, sparking strikes from the very artisans who built the platform's reputation.
When you build your business on someone else’s land, you're a sharecropper. You do the work, you take the risk, but the middleman can change the rent whenever they want.
The rise of the "Aggregator"
Ben Thompson, a well-known tech analyst, calls this "Aggregation Theory." In the old days, power came from controlling the supply. Think of a newspaper that owned the printing presses and delivery trucks. Today, power comes from controlling the demand.
Google doesn't own the content on the web. It owns the people looking for content. Because it owns the users, it can dictate terms to the content creators. This shift has turned the economy upside down. We no longer value the "make." We value the "find."
How to fight back against the middleman tax
You can't completely opt out of the modern economy. Unless you want to live in a cabin and weave your own clothes, you’re going to use a middleman today. But you can minimize the damage.
Go direct whenever possible.
If you found a local restaurant on a delivery app, call them and order for pickup. Most restaurants prefer this because they keep the full margin. If you like a writer, subscribe to their personal newsletter or buy their book from their own website.
Watch the "free" traps.
If a service is free, the middleman is likely selling your data or your attention. Sometimes that's a fair trade. Often, it isn't. Be willing to pay for tools that don't have a hidden agenda.
Own your audience.
If you’re a business owner, your biggest priority should be moving your customers off third-party platforms and onto your own lists. An email address is worth more than a thousand "likes" on an app that could shadowban you tomorrow.
Support local infrastructure.
Farmers' markets are the original anti-middleman move. You talk to the person who grew the carrot. The money goes into their pocket. It’s simple, it’s efficient, and it bypasses the digital gatekeepers entirely.
The middleman isn't going away. They provide a service that we clearly want. But we need to stop pretending that these platforms are neutral utilities. They’re for-profit toll booths on the highway of modern life. It's time to start looking for the off-ramps.
Stop clicking the first sponsored link. Look for the "About" page. Find the person behind the product. The less we rely on the gatekeepers to tell us what to buy, the more power we keep for ourselves. It takes more effort, but saving the soul of the economy—and your own wallet—is worth the extra clicks.
Check your monthly subscriptions right now. See how many are for "services" that just connect you to other services. Cancel the ones that don't add real value. Buy your next gift directly from an artist's personal shop instead of a massive marketplace. Start there.
