[mooreds]

> Middle men generally have negative impacts on society overall once they become entrenched.

This book covers some very valuable roles middlemen play: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-53020-2

> What’s preventing homeowners from buying and selling to each other directly? Why do we need real estate agents?

I wrote about this 8 years ago (was employed as a software engineer at a real estate brokerage at the time):

"I think that there are lots of marketplaces have sprung up via the internet, but as far as I know, the significant ones all offer products that have one of these characteristics:

   * the consumer buys them often [for some definition of often] (airplane tickets)
   * the product is fungible (books, cars)
   * the product is relatively cheap (stuff sold on ebay, amazon)

All of these characteristics lower the risk of purchase. Housing has none of these characteristics. And I don't know how it could, short of a real manufacturing revolution or more houses built out of shipping containers."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5539026