A bunch of people independently operating their cars to give rides with no common means to find them, schedule them, and pay them makes them almost completely useless. The network is the only thing making them useful to consumers.
It's like claiming Google is only valuable because it has websites to crawl.
"The network is the only thing making them useful to consumers."
No, this statement is entirely and purely false. The reason the network has value is because there are people on the network doing the work. If no one was doing the work, the network would be worthless.
Stop falling into the trap of believing that the people actually doing the labor are not contributing, or do not have value.
"Stop falling into the trap of believing that the people actually doing the labor are not contributing, or do not have value."
That is not what pathseeker said. You said (and pathseeker agreed) that the network is only valuable because there are people in it to do the labor. Pathseeker also said that having people willing and able to do the work is only valuable with a network to organize them and connect them to the people who need work done. You're both right. The people and the network are both contributing, and they both have value. Neither would be valuable on its own.
but often the network gets a disproportionaly large share of the reward (i.e., the extraction of value is higher on the network side vs the labour side). This is the same as the capital vs labour argument - one without the other isn't going to produce value, but the capital side is able to extract a higher value than the labour side.
"Larger share"? Maybe. "Disproportionately"? I think not. The correct proportion is not necessarily 1:1. If the capital / network gets a larger share, it's because it contributes more by multiplying the productivity of the labor. Also, in a culture where everyone wants to consume and live in the moment rather than save and plan for the future, capital is relatively scarce compared to labor, which gives capital owners an advantageous position in any negotiation.
I do think they get a disproportionate share of the reward. And you can't argue that it's because the network contributes more; it's purely because the network has access to venture capital.
Saying capital is relatively scarce compared to labor is flat out false. Look at the last 10 years or so. Venture Captial has been flush just about anywhere you look.
So your argument is that venture capitalists are idiots, throwing money at people building networks and not expecting anything of similar value in return? VCs are not in the habit of throwing money away. When a VC-funded venture succeeds, the VCs take the lion's share of the rewards. Accepting VC funding is not a quick path to easy riches. (Of course, the VCs are also taking on the majority of the risk if the venture fails, as happens more often than not; in the end, over enough ventures, it all balances out.)
Capital is not money, but rather durable goods which contribute to more efficient production. It is the networks which are the capital here. Money can be used to buy capital, but only if someone goes to the trouble of designing that capital first. There is plenty of available labor looking for productive work to do, just as there are plenty of VCs searching for ventures likely enough to succeed to justify the investment. It is a lot easier to find people able to do whatever work is required than it is to find the right capital (networks) to organize them and enabled them to do the right work productively.
Both capital and labor are needed. The networks receive a greater portion of the reward because they are more scarce than labor as well as contributing more to overall productivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
A bunch of people independently operating their cars to give rides with no common means to find them, schedule them, and pay them makes them almost completely useless. The network is the only thing making them useful to consumers.
It's like claiming Google is only valuable because it has websites to crawl.