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I think many people have some intuition that work can be separated between “real work“ (farming, say, or building trains) and “middlemen” (e.g. accounting, sale

I think many people have some intuition that work can be separated between “real work“ (farming, say, or building trains) and “middlemen” (e.g. accounting, salespeople, lawyers, bureaucrats, DEI strategists). “Bullshit jobs” by David Graeber is a more intellectualized framing of the same intuition. Many people believe that middlemen are entirely useless, and we can get rid of (almost) all middleman jobs, RETVRN to people doing real work, and society would be much better off. Like many populist intuitions, this intuition is completely backwards. Middlemen are extremely important! Coordination problems are real problems, and the bottlenecks to global wealth and flourishing. The post goes into details for why.

ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
These examples are not good, almost none of those are what most people would call middlemen. A perfect example of an actual middleman would be the type of hustle grindset loser who sets up an Amazon store that sells merchandise from Alibaba at steep price hikes while contributing nothing to the product or its delivery. That’s a middle man.
- kykat 10mo ago
  Yep, you can't just "redefine" a noun to get a clickbait title
  - christophilus 10mo ago
    I mean, you just described a whole lot of the internet.
    - ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
      I mean, you can do it but nobody calls that good, worthwhile reading.
- LinchZhang 10mo ago
  Why fixate on a specific word rather than the overall idea? If the idea is clear enough I don't think it's worth fighting over semantics.
  - exmadscientist 10mo ago
    It isn't clear enough, though. Your argument is actually seriously muddled by your choice to redefine the common usage of a word to your own usage. The viability of your title flips depending on whether one adopts your definition or the common definition. That's bad writing.
  - ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
    It's not semantics, it's your entire point: > A merchant a) physically moves wheat to where it’s scarce (and valued more), b) physically moves beans to where it’s scarce (and valued more), c) figures out an exchange rate, and d) takes on risks of spoilage and banditry. For her efforts, the merchant takes a fractional cut. This is not a middle man, this is logistics! An entire segment of the global economy, and not a small one! > Ten people want to build a bridge. But they face problems: Who works on the foundation vs. the supports? How do we prevent the left side team from building something incompatible with the right side team? When is the foundation strong enough to start building on top? How do we know if we’re on track or behind schedule? This is project management, also not a middle man! Like I get nobody likes being criticized but dude, your entire post is resting on a bad foundation. If you start off an article about cars talking about how jetskis are the future of highway transportation, I'm not gonna take that seriously either, because you fumbled it on the starting line.
  - russelldjimmy 10mo ago
    I think many readers have a hard time letting go of whatever expectation the title created in their mind and then refocusing to try and understand the broader point. Not that I support clickbait titles or poor communication, but I do agree with you that it’s generally more helpful to let go of the semantic details as long as the broader point is understood. But many people choose to get hung up over the words (probably) because of an inability to self soothe the first shock.
- AndrewDucker 10mo ago
  In which case they're contributing discoverability. Because clearly the buyer didn't discover the original store themselves, but did find it on Amazon.
vlovich123 10mo ago
The problem is the value tends to be ephemeral and single use. Once the connection is established, the parties are better off communicating directly. That’s why marketplaces like TaskRabbit struggle to generalize and grow. Contracting firms often struggle in similar ways and try to put clauses in their contracts to retain their relevance.

ToucanLoucan 10mo ago

These examples are not good, almost none of those are what most people would call middlemen. A perfect example of an actual middleman would be the type of hustle grindset loser who sets up an Amazon store that sells merchandise from Alibaba at steep price hikes while contributing nothing to the product or its delivery. That’s a middle man.

kykat 10mo ago
Yep, you can't just "redefine" a noun to get a clickbait title
- christophilus 10mo ago
  I mean, you just described a whole lot of the internet.
  - ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
    I mean, you can do it but nobody calls that good, worthwhile reading.
LinchZhang 10mo ago
Why fixate on a specific word rather than the overall idea? If the idea is clear enough I don't think it's worth fighting over semantics.
- exmadscientist 10mo ago
  It isn't clear enough, though. Your argument is actually seriously muddled by your choice to redefine the common usage of a word to your own usage. The viability of your title flips depending on whether one adopts your definition or the common definition. That's bad writing.
- ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
  It's not semantics, it's your entire point: > A merchant a) physically moves wheat to where it’s scarce (and valued more), b) physically moves beans to where it’s scarce (and valued more), c) figures out an exchange rate, and d) takes on risks of spoilage and banditry. For her efforts, the merchant takes a fractional cut. This is not a middle man, this is logistics! An entire segment of the global economy, and not a small one! > Ten people want to build a bridge. But they face problems: Who works on the foundation vs. the supports? How do we prevent the left side team from building something incompatible with the right side team? When is the foundation strong enough to start building on top? How do we know if we’re on track or behind schedule? This is project management, also not a middle man! Like I get nobody likes being criticized but dude, your entire post is resting on a bad foundation. If you start off an article about cars talking about how jetskis are the future of highway transportation, I'm not gonna take that seriously either, because you fumbled it on the starting line.
- russelldjimmy 10mo ago
  I think many readers have a hard time letting go of whatever expectation the title created in their mind and then refocusing to try and understand the broader point. Not that I support clickbait titles or poor communication, but I do agree with you that it’s generally more helpful to let go of the semantic details as long as the broader point is understood. But many people choose to get hung up over the words (probably) because of an inability to self soothe the first shock.
AndrewDucker 10mo ago
In which case they're contributing discoverability. Because clearly the buyer didn't discover the original store themselves, but did find it on Amazon.

vlovich123 10mo ago

The problem is the value tends to be ephemeral and single use. Once the connection is established, the parties are better off communicating directly. That’s why marketplaces like TaskRabbit struggle to generalize and grow. Contracting firms often struggle in similar ways and try to put clauses in their contracts to retain their relevance.