What you say is true in the purest sense. Building on this, some economists regard monopolies of exchange as "assets". Baumol (the economist referenced in the a

What you say is true in the purest sense. Building on this, some economists regard monopolies of exchange as "assets". Baumol (the economist referenced in the article) did a lot of research into "Contestble Markets Theory", essentially concluding that markets which are not contestable generate free money for incumbants/owners/monopolists You could say that anything to do with the "Sharing" or "Gig" economy is a play on rent extraction. Companies seek to own a marketplace in order to levy a rent on transactions.