Not quite; some of this is about moving wealth around, changing the captured value to favor the buyer instead of the seller. But that’s just the “efficient mar

Not quite; some of this is about moving wealth around, changing the captured value to favor the buyer instead of the seller. But that’s just the “efficient market” part of this. A fee like this could very well be an inefficient rent-capture that has managed to make its removal more expensive in the short-term than the short-term cost of allowing it to remain. Said less charitably, it’s a racket. I would have thought that on HN of all places, where so many folks are attempting “disruption” (ie finding these unnecessary market inefficiencies and stepping around their cultural/legal/systemic barriers in order to reap some of the otherwise captured value), this would be better understood.