
The coming hyper-verticalization of labor marketplaces - tallyhotallyho
https://medium.com/craft-ventures/linkedin-is-the-new-craigslist-39e71238e995
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anigbrowl
* At StubHub, the company I founded, we picked off the “tickets” category.*

[...]

 _3\. Develop a strategy to defend against disintermediation [...]

4\. Consider building a data moat_

It's worth reading this because it's unusually frank about the deliberate
exploitation customers and suppliers and essentially advocates MITM economic
attacks by splitting trusted suppliers and consumers from each other and
establishing and maintaining convenience, economic, and information
asymmetries in order to milk the market for profit.

We need more things like craigslist and less, much much less, of this sort of
thing. Verticalization can create value, but as described here it is far more
about extracting it, by commoditizing and centralizing what were previously
distributed peer-to-peer relationships. The argument is that these verticals
are more economically efficient, but this is only true in the sense of
maximizing the dollar value of each transaction (and taking a commission);
this comes with significant negative externalities for the participants - loss
of privacy, loss of transparency, loss of negotiating ability, loss of
autonomy, and loss of opportunity.

They're not creating a marketplace, but a company store in which the
management has been automated away. Because it's distributed, striking is
impossible and the only way workers in the system have any relief is to
organize off-platform and then attempt legal action, via a court system which
the corporation can stack directly (through hiring very high priced legal
representation) and indirectly (through lobbying and campaign contributions).

Craigslist created a marketplace and charged a small fee for very high-value
transactions selling vehicles or hiring for employment. This is just a land
grab.

