Middlemen Role Debate

Comments debate the value, necessity, and drawbacks of middlemen in business, transactions, and platforms, questioning whether they should be eliminated, replaced, or provide essential services.

📉 Falling 0.5x Startups & Business
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Keywords

e.g OR ondc.org SURE ONDC LinkedIn OpenTable NOMIDDLEMAN USA COVID middleman middlemen middle man middle farmers eliminating cut fees man retailer

Sample Comments

thfuran • Mar 14, 2023 • View on HN

What's the benefit of adding a profit-seeking middleman?

mistercow • Mar 20, 2012 • View on HN

Eliminating the middleman is not the point. Avoiding the negative consequences of having a middleman is the point, and eliminating the middleman is merely a means to that end. If you can be a middleman without (or with fewer of) those negative consequences, then you're working toward the same goal.

meheleventyone • Dec 14, 2021 • View on HN

I thought the idea was to have less middlemen?

mdda • Mar 20, 2012 • View on HN

Could you give some examples of the value added by middlemen? And the headaches?

Suppafly • Sep 20, 2024 • View on HN

That's literally what middlemen do, they wouldn't exist if they couldn't extract value from the items they pass along.

jrockway • May 24, 2014 • View on HN

This is a great way of putting it. Their business doesn't need a middleman. They added a middleman. Now they don't like the middleman.The tears, they just aren't coming.

paxys • Mar 25, 2022 • View on HN

There are middlemen extracting fees at every step

Laaas • Feb 25, 2023 • View on HN

Why do you need a middleman in the first place?

DomreiRoam • Apr 20, 2017 • View on HN

Middleman have some utility but I think often they extract more money than the value they provide.

aqme28 • Dec 27, 2016 • View on HN

By "eliminate that middleman" do they mean "become that middleman"?