Zero marginal costs force platforms to extract rent rather than earn profit

Evidence

In a world where marginal costs (i.e. the cost of providing one more unit of something, e.g. another minute of broadband, another video to stream, another ebook) are tending to zero, prices vanish and serious money can only be made by charging cloud rents (e.g. money to promote one’s post on Facebook or the 35 per cent of revenues sellers are charged by Amazon to sell their stuff). — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 999

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the 35% Amazon cut as pure digital rent — landlord economics applied to marketplaces.
• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s law-merchant work — both trace how market institutions extract from exchange. — connects to: Monopoly rent discounts the future in favor of the past — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy:…, 62; Platforms extract value from each transaction without absorbing employment obligations — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 220; Lean platforms are unprofitable ventures sustained mainly by venture capital welfare — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 75 (+12 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 999

Broader Connections

• Inefficient payment intermediaries persist because their cuts generate collective rent #exemplifies (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 606
• Monopoly rent arises from low competition, not production cost #qualifies (0.78) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 803
• Most social interactions escape capitalist valorisation, which is why platforms must be built #expands (0.78) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 53
• Private equity asset-stripping is feudal rent extraction, not wealth creation #exemplifies (0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 434