That’s fun and perhaps strangely more relevant than ever. It seems like most capitalist players today strive for playing monopoly games instead of traditional m

That’s fun and perhaps strangely more relevant than ever. It seems like most capitalist players today strive for playing monopoly games instead of traditional market games (like providing a better price and/or higher quality products). Especially in tech, nobody wants to make merely a better product, but rather a “platform” or “marketplace”, where controlling access is the goal. Sure, sometimes we get a totally cool new product or VC subsidized pricing for a while but the end goal is more often that not that the company sells you permission to access some service that you’ve come to rely on. This is true both if you pay with money or you trade your personal information in exchange for your attention (ie ads). In some cases, there are legit reasons for middlemen to exist and provide some reputational or safety function. But it feels to me like we’re seeing an unnatural bend towards this model, even for things that serve no such purpose at all (like most iot crap, heated car seats, drm ink etc etc).