Came across this old video Steve Jobs on the agency problem
The agency problem is what is wrong with many of our current systems. Producers send their goods to a middle-man Agent for distribution. This middleman agent is aggregating many producer’s goods into a bundled package to deliver to the end consumer. On the surface this seems like a win-win-win as the Producer gets paid for their work, the consumer gets a variety of products for 1 bundled price that they otherwise would not have been able to get, and the middleman gets their cut.
But the hidden pitfall of this system is that the middleman controls the distribution channels, and they have every incentive in the word to keep that competitive advantage going. In search of growth, they will squeeze the supply chain to reduce the product quality and provide the consumer with less choice while controlling their channel.
We need more decentralized distribution protocols like nostr to keep the system honest.
