I built a marketplace this year. It charges a ten percent commission on every transaction. Then I had to decide whether that made me a middleman providing value or a gatekeeper collecting rent.
David Graeber had something to say about this.
Graeber's argument, roughly, is that a significant portion of what passes for economic activity in modern life is people getting paid to sit between two parties who could, in theory, deal directly with each other. The genius of the arrangement is that the middleman makes himself feel indispensable — and sometimes he is. The question worth asking, which most middlemen do not ask, is which kind you are.
I have been making decisions since I was twelve years old. By the time I was running my first business, I had already learned that someone has to decide things, and it might as well be the person willing to live with the consequences. I have lost large sums of money and made them back. I have been in rooms where the wrong answer was expensive in ways that had nothing to do with money. I have made the call and not walked it back.
Nassim Taleb has a useful test. He calls it skin in the game. The Roman architect was required to sleep under the bridge he designed — if it fell, he fell with it. The consultant who flies in, advises, and flies home bears nothing. That's the problem with most intermediaries: they collect the fee without absorbing the risk. The go-between who earns the commission is the one who stays when things go wrong. I have stayed.
That willingness is the real service a go-between provides. Not the platform. Not the ten percent. The willingness to be the one who decides — and to absorb what follows.
Cory Doctorow has a word for what happens when platforms forget this. He calls it enshittification. The pattern is consistent: first the platform is good to users, then it abuses users to benefit businesses, then it abuses businesses to extract value for shareholders. Facebook. Amazon. The progression is predictable once you know to look for it. The platform that started by solving a real problem ends by collecting rent on the solution.
Brief Work takes ten percent. Whether that's rent-seeking or a real service is the only question that matters. Graeber asks if the middleman adds value. Taleb asks if he bears the risk. Doctorow asks what happens after the platform gets comfortable. I intend to keep answering all three.
Whether that's worth ten percent is what Brief Work will answer eventually. The market will decide. The market is unsentimental and I appreciate that about it.