[inigyou]

Yes, and the art of this game is to extract value which you did not create. It may or may not come alongside creating value. Uber creates value in the form of an app marketplace for taxis, but it also pushes taxi wages down below the sustainability line without pushing prices down that far, and pockets the difference for itself. Apple made a cool phone that it sells for a high but fair price, but it also takes 30% of everything you buy with that phone, just because it can.

[enriquto]

> the art of this game is to extract value which you did not create

in common parlance, theft

[csallen]

Accepting money from willing customers, who are paying you for access to some technology you created that they find valuable, is not theft. Quite the opposite, it's almost always two happy parties engaging in an exchange that each of them finds advantageous.

[ceejayoz]

> Quite the opposite, it's almost always two very happy parties engaging in an exchange that each of them finds advantageous.

When I buy an iPhone from Apple, I suspect quite a few folks in the mines, factories, shipping, and retail chain that gets those "two happy parties" connected aren't so happy.

They are, however, deeply important to the transaction.

[csallen]

> I suspect quite a few folks in the mines, factories, shipping, and retail chain that gets those "two happy parties" connected aren't so happy.

Okay, if you're going to make such a claim and trust in it, then can I presume you have answers to these two questions?

1. In a world without Apple, what would these people be doing that would make them happier?

2. What exactly is stopping them from doing that now?

[ceejayoz]

> What exactly is stopping them from doing that now?

I think the rise of China demonstrates they're certainly trying.

[esarbe]

1. Not being forced to work in the cobalt mines, I suspect.

2. Economic coercion. The people are forced by the capitalist system - that was shaped by capitalist interests - to participate in a system they don't have any say in. They cannot even opt out.

[csallen]

1. You didn't answer the question. You said what they wouldn't be doing. What would they be doing that would be making them happier?

2. You didn't answer this question either. What specifically is stopping them from opting out? Who is putting a gun to their head and saying they can't live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle or be a subsistence farmer?

The answer is nothing. People are largely making these choices themselves, because they're better options, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who's read a bit of history.

[satvikpendem]

They are working for money, often in jobs paying more than others in their local economy, when they otherwise wouldn't be.

[lkjdsklf]

It’s still exploitative.

The point is that the “gains” are overwhelmingly absorbed by the top.

There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share of the profits and raise up that entire part of the world.

But yet, they don’t. Because that would cost them some of their own wealth.

I’m not even saying it should be equally distributed. The disparity is insane right now though.

[csallen]

> There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share...

Why should they pay more than market worth? When you go shop at a store, do you pay double the price tag just because you can? No, you don't, because that would cost you more of your wealth.

Does the average person in a first-world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a second-world countries? Does the average person in a second world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a third world country? No, and no. It's not really a common thing in human nature to give up a lot of what we have in order to support those who are less fortunate. You might say that's sad, but imo it's still a fact.

What is curious about human nature is how, despite this lack of behavior on our own part, we expect those who have more than us to give us what they have.

Market wages and prices are fairly set, largely due to supply and demand.

> The disparity is insane right now though

The disparity is better than ever imo. I'd rather live in this time period than any other, thanks to technology, which is a great equalizer. It provides amazing quality of life improvements across so many areas, from education and healthcare to entertainment and food; then capitalistic competition absolutely demolishes the costs of this tech, to the point where prohibitively expensive tech becomes affordable to billions.

Today, a middle class person can eat a cheeseburger that's just as good as what Bill Gates is eating, drive a car that's 99% as good as his, travel to the same places he travels to, wear clothes that are just as good as his, read the same books, watch movies, listen to the same music, go to the same plays, etc. The rich sit in slightly bigger chairs, enjoy slightly shorter waits, and many other improvements that historically would've been considered negligible compared to the gaps between kings and peasants, nobility and servants, owners and slaves, rich and poor.

In fact, the richest are having to resort to paying insane prices for useless luxury goods and brand names just to differentiate themselves. Or paying outrageous sums for luxury toys like yachts and planes that most wouldn't even want.

[ceejayoz]

Arbeit macht frei!

[satvikpendem]

Ah yes, people working for money, often more than they could make in other jobs in the local economy, is now slavery or concentration camp level conditions. I wish people here would actually live in a second or third world country before saying things like this from the comfort of their air conditioned house.

[inigyou]

Before the chokepoint capitalist: you go to a store and pay $20 for an average-quality product. The value chain benefits by getting $20, you benefit by getting the product. Mutual exchange of value.

After the chokepoint capitalist: the store has closed so you go to a website and pay $30 to receive the crappiest version of the product in 6 to 10 business days. The website gets $20, the value chain that does 100% of the work (the website didn't add value, just stuck itself in the middle of your transaction) gets $7, the post office gets $3, you get the product. Mutual exchange of value.

This "mutual beneficial exchange" stuff is like that xkcd alt text on free speech: it's as if the best argument you can make to support a political position position is that it's not literally illegal to express support for it. "It's a mutually beneficial exchange" is saying the best thing about a transaction is that it's not literally a scam. Seems we should aim a bit higher than that if we want a society that works, yeah?

[stouset]

This is the key insight.

Chant “mutually beneficial exchange” all you want but the system and its players have done everything possible to ensure that everyone at the bottom has as little leverage and as few alternatives as humanly possible.

[csallen]

Every time my mom comes to visit me, she insists on going to the store to buy things just like she always did. There are plenty of stores. In most cases, these brick-and-mortar stores have significantly fewer options than online stores, for obvious reasons -- because they're physical and have limited space. The online stores are often competitively priced, often cheaper, even with shipping, because they have the benefit of scale. I can get an incredible amount of high-quality goods off Amazon at blazing speeds, often the same day, without having to leave my desk, drive my car, burn any fuel, or clog any roads. It provides tons of value.

Not only that, but I have an incredible amount of competition. Thousands of alternative products, listings, websites, etc. I went to buy a standing desk last week, and there were literally thousands of choices all over the internet: solid wood standing desks, aluminum standing desks, tall ones, short ones, mid-century modern ones, futuristic ones, etc.

I have no idea what planet y'all are living on to say that people now have no leverage, few alternatives, no stores, slow delivery, and get no value.

[ToValueFunfetti]

I don't think most people would use this definition. It covers gambling/lottery winnings, finding buried treasure or a gold mine, and paying someone to file your taxes and splitting the extra deductions they found. Really, it includes employment at large- the only 'non-theft' employment would be that which provides no net benefit to the employer. There are parlances where these are included intentionally and they share a starting syllable, but to the common people this is not a definition of theft.

[inigyou]

Why do people keep assuming that employers don't do any work? Management is work. Is an employee stealing if they receive any net benefit from their employment?

[mannanj]

Everything is a rich man’s trick.

- Documentary

[BobbyJo]

You're overlooking that net new value was created in both of the scenarios. Don't you have any idea how many family horse businesses went under with the invention of the car? How many artisans wound up broke post-industrialization? We can both agree that we'd all be much much poorer in the world where those things didn't happen. NVidia makes a huge margin on the things they sell. Is that theft?

[verall]

No they aren't overlooking it. They literally call out the additional net value created (i.e. iPhone hw sales), and then call out that to make the enormous amounts that they do make, they also crib value from others (i.e. app store).

You can argue that the app store and vetting process itself is worth up to or over 30% (i.e. they are giving value away, not extracting it), but they make a clear distinction.

[BobbyJo]

Overlooking was the wrong word. I meant more like downplaying or underestimating. Uber completely changed transportation, and the legal saga that follows shows just how big of a change they made on the world, for better or worse. Likewise with Apple and the iphone. They created (or popularized depending on how you want to frame it) the platform that now dominates the human condition. We are literally fumbling, on a global scale, with how to interact with our phones because of how much influence they have over us.

[pydry]

The issue isnt that theyre overlooking new value created it's that you're overlooking the enormous power imbalance some parties are using to exploit others for material gain.

Uber's profit margins are about 10% value created and 90% exploitation of power imbalance between the rich corporation and itinerant drivers and less well capitalized competitors.

Whether somebody acknowledges this reality or not tells you where their political allegiances lie.

[fastball]

The entire "app-based rideshare market" was created by Uber, and in 2026 they don't capture anywhere close to 100% of it. An Uber driver's share of profits without Uber existing is $0.

[inigyou]

Back before Uber existed I was ordering a taxi on a website and they even had real time tracking. Yeah it wasn't an app, but most things weren't at that time.

[pydry]

Why is that relevant to what I said?

[fastball]

Because what you said is nonsense. They are capturing a fraction of the value they created with the invention of app-based ridesharing. They are not dipping into some magical pool of "exploitation" to juice that. Anyone that is unhappy with being an Uber driver can literally do anything else. Nobody is forcing them, there is no exploitation.

[pydry]

Absolute horseshit.

They maintain an app and some servers and do some cursory checks on drivers. Those things are pretty easy to do.

In a properly competitive market for ridesharing apps those things would be commoditized to the point that they are pennies per ride.

The vast, vast majority of the value is getting you from A to B whether you are in denial about that or not.

[BobbyJo]

> Uber's profit margins are about 10% value created and 90% exploitation of power imbalance between the rich corporation and itinerant drivers

That feels like a number you are just making up based on hating Uber.

[steveBK123]

The world is not zero sum, AND in practice most business models are not entirely value creation or rent seeking, but a mix of both.

Ideally a new business creates more value than it simply takes out of an existing marketplace.

I think one can argue a lot of 2010s app-ification, Uber-of-X, or what I called "re-intermediation" was more than 50% rent seeking.

The business model of being willing to lose billions selling $1 of goods for 80cents (before even talking CapEx) until your competitors fold (and then raise prices) is the kind of thing we used to regulate against.

At some point our regulation shifted towards a more short term "if it makes consumer prices lower right now its OK".

[nfw2]

The word "create" is too fuzzy here. If the thing that your company is selling wouldn't exist if you hadn't started the company, did you not "create" it?

[ip26]

Parallel invention would like a word. Elisha Gray registered a patent for a telephone the same day as Alexander.

It's impossible to fully prove a counterfactual, but few things "wouldn't exist at all" if "that one person" hadn't done it.

Netflix is a decent example. Many people saw the coming of video streaming. We would still be able to stream videos today even if Hastings had stayed at Rational.

[nfw2]

Sure, if you extend time horizon to infinity, everything would probably be invented eventually by someone else. Two people filing patents on the same day is an exceptional case though, not the norm.

There are also products that seemingly should exist but don't because no would-be inventor has found capital, eg. a decent bluetooth keyboard+trackpads with the same layout as a laptop. I know because I spent an hour trying to find one yesterday, and they basically just don't exist.

[ip26]

You don't need to project to the heat death of the universe to get Facebook without Zuckerberg.

[nfw2]

But you do need to project to the heat death of the universe to get high speed rail in California, which is the counterfactual worth considering since the entire system of capital is what is under criticism

[wavemode]

> Apple made a cool phone that it sells for a high but fair price, but it also takes 30% of everything you buy with that phone

Apple was already a multibillion dollar company almost 30 years before the iPhone was invented...

(though I'm sure you will have no trouble inventing some other reason that that wealth, too, was created through exploitation)

[ZeroGravitas]

Even before Apple existed Steve Jobs was stealing wages from Steve Wozniak who did the actual work.

We have evidence he was still doing this decades later when he colluded to depress wages with Eric Schmidt at Google when he felt Apple employees were being offered too much in salary.

I'm happy to assume he was stealing money from people at every point in between because he was, quite famously, an asshole.

[_DeadFred_]

I mean Apple only survived because very exploitive Microsoft kept them afloat so that Microsoft had someone to point to as competition when the government came around talking about monopolies. So yeah, Apple only exists because a very exploitive corporation propped them up as protection from consequences of that company's exploitation.

[sophrosyne42]

It comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the market operated. Profits only come from exchange. It is more accurate to say profits are given than extracted.

[runarberg]

What you are describing is exploitation. And to be fair, you probably also mean exploitation. I’ve never really understood the distinction, nor do I believe there is any meaningful distinction. Externalizing costs is just one of many ways capitalists exploit workers. But externalities doesn’t sound quite as bad so maybe capitalists can justify their obviously evil behavior by using a fancier term for their exploitation against their workers.