I didn't say being a middle man is worthless, by definition they provide value by making transactions more convenient. Netflix could have continued to focus on

I didn't say being a middle man is worthless, by definition they provide value by making transactions more convenient. Netflix could have continued to focus on this actual advantage it had -- building its partners / clients (studios) to provide streaming services with a convenient single point with the customer and economies of size and scale. If they had charged a small price commensurate with the service being provided to studios, on reasonable terms, and had not attempted to fund a direct competitor to their clients, they quite probably could have continued being a great distribution service. But they didn't, they threw that away trying to fund a studio startup for some strange reason.