Inefficient payment intermediaries persist because their cuts generate collective rent

Evidence

Exactly the same clunky process is activated, in reverse, when Ai pays Jürgen for the propellers his shipyard buys from him. Is there a reason why such an unwieldy process has survived the wonders of the digital age? Of course there is: its clunkiness and mind-boggling inefficiency is a source of rent as each private banker and go-between involved in such transfers takes a small cut. Taken together, these small cuts amount to a fortune. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 606

Categorization

• XREF: Directly reinforces the reader’s core thesis: complexity and friction in the payments system are not bugs but deliberate rent-extraction features — the same logic as platform intermediaries in digital capitalism. — connects to: Zero marginal costs force platforms to extract rent rather than earn profit — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 999; Cross-border payments route through a clunky US-controlled cascade of intermediaries — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 603; Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 606

Broader Connections

• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones #complicates (0.80)
• Cross-border payments route through a clunky US-controlled cascade of intermediaries #complicates (0.78) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 603
• Territorial allocation fails when profits are unevenly distributed, so cartels share customers instead #exemplifies (0.78) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 525