I happen to like “middle-men” — when it improves my experience and saves time. I don’t want to go to the refinery to buy gas any more than I want to spend a day

I happen to like “middle-men” — when it improves my experience and saves time. I don’t want to go to the refinery to buy gas any more than I want to spend a day driving to a dozen farms to pick up my weekly groceries. Middle-men are bad when they add no value. For example, subscriptions in the App Store — I love that because I can go to one place and cancel anything instantly without having to go through The NY Times or Angie’s List style phone “retention” representatives. For the business, it’s a win as well, I am more likely to subscribe to something when there is less onboarding and offboarding friction. With the App Store, I can, for example, change my credit card seamlessly for all of my subscriptions rather than trying to both remember and track down individual vendors. I also don’t trust some <random vendor> with my payment, or even contact information. That’s worth value to me. I would love it if I could use Apple Pay for everything, such as utility payments or insurance payments. Dealing with MetLife for example, is a nightmare. To set up automatic credit card payments, you have to fill out a 2-page paper form and mail or fax it to them.