Middlemen Are Eating the World (and That's Good, Actually)

https://inchpin.substack.com/p/middlemen-are-eating-the-world-and

4•LinchZhang•2h ago

Comments

LinchZhang•2h ago

I think many people have some intuition that work can be separated between “real work“ (farming, say, or building trains) and “middlemen” (e.g. accounting, salespeople, lawyers, bureaucrats, DEI strategists). “Bullshit jobs” by David Graeber is a more intellectualized framing of the same intuition. Many people believe that middlemen are entirely useless, and we can get rid of (almost) all middleman jobs, RETVRN to people doing real work, and society would be much better off.

Like many populist intuitions, this intuition is completely backwards. Middlemen are extremely important! Coordination problems are real problems, and the bottlenecks to global wealth and flourishing.

The post goes into details for why.

ToucanLoucan•1h ago

These examples are not good, almost none of those are what most people would call middlemen. A perfect example of an actual middleman would be the type of hustle grindset loser who sets up an Amazon store that sells merchandise from Alibaba at steep price hikes while contributing nothing to the product or its delivery. That’s a middle man.

kykat•1h ago

Yep, you can't just "redefine" a noun to get a clickbait title

christophilus•1h ago

I mean, you just described a whole lot of the internet.

ToucanLoucan•7m ago

I mean, you can do it but nobody calls that good, worthwhile reading.

LinchZhang•26m ago

Why fixate on a specific word rather than the overall idea? If the idea is clear enough I don't think it's worth fighting over semantics.

exmadscientist•11m ago

It isn't clear enough, though. Your argument is actually seriously muddled by your choice to redefine the common usage of a word to your own usage. The viability of your title flips depending on whether one adopts your definition or the common definition.

That's bad writing.

ToucanLoucan•8m ago

It's not semantics, it's your entire point:

> A merchant a) physically moves wheat to where it’s scarce (and valued more), b) physically moves beans to where it’s scarce (and valued more), c) figures out an exchange rate, and d) takes on risks of spoilage and banditry. For her efforts, the merchant takes a fractional cut.

This is not a middle man, this is logistics! An entire segment of the global economy, and not a small one!

> Ten people want to build a bridge. But they face problems: Who works on the foundation vs. the supports? How do we prevent the left side team from building something incompatible with the right side team? When is the foundation strong enough to start building on top? How do we know if we’re on track or behind schedule?

This is project management, also not a middle man!

Like I get nobody likes being criticized but dude, your entire post is resting on a bad foundation. If you start off an article about cars talking about how jetskis are the future of highway transportation, I'm not gonna take that seriously either, because you fumbled it on the starting line.

vlovich123•56m ago

The problem is the value tends to be ephemeral and single use. Once the connection is established, the parties are better off communicating directly.

That’s why marketplaces like TaskRabbit struggle to generalize and grow. Contracting firms often struggle in similar ways and try to put clauses in their contracts to retain their relevance.

JohnFen•2h ago

Boy did this set off my pendant side!

> “middlemen” (e.g. accounting, salespeople, lawyers, bureaucrats, DEI strategists).

I wouldn't call any of those positions "middlemen", though. A middleman is an entity that sits between a producer and a purchaser and takes a cut, usually by connecting the two. None of the examples listed are that.

LinchZhang•2h ago

I agree I used the word substantially more expansively than some other people use it. That's why I defined it in the beginning so people can understand the local scoping of the relevant word! :)

(That said "salespeople" are in the middle layer under your definition as well)

The other term I was thinking of using for this post was "bullshit jobs." So titling my post "bullshit jobs are real jobs" but I didn't want to fight against the motte-and-bailey of specific jobs being possibly bullshit jobs.

("coordinators" presumed the conclusion too much and also points to a specific thing )

llbbdd•2m ago

Salespeople do provide a service - selling.

polishdude20•1h ago

I'll be the pedant and say the word is "pedant" :)

AuthAuth•41m ago

>Bloody bean counters! Mate they just need to pick up a toolbelt and do some real work all they do is fuck everything up.

A sentiment often expressed by my dad as the 'bean counters' organize 1000s of people across 100s of companies and tons and tons of materials and machinery to all arrive on site and preform specific tasks in an efficient manner.

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