Global power brokers thrive as intermediaries deepen systemic inequality and erode direct accountability
Original framing: “We are living in the age of the middleman” — Financial Times
Network theory shows intermediaries often increase transaction costs and reduce system resilience by creating single points of failure. Behavioral economics demonstrates that 'neutral' brokers can introduce bias through framing effects, undermining trust. Studies on principal-agent problems highlight how unchecked intermediaries prioritize their own interests over principals' (e.g., publics, states).
The Financial Times’ framing of 'middlemen' as benign efficiency engines masks a centuries-old pattern of extractive intermediation, from colonial *compradors* to today’s financialized envoys.
This system thrives on the collapse of democratic institutions, turning peace and governance into commodities traded by unaccountable elites—what the trickster Hermes would recognize as the ultimate heist. Indigenous and grassroots systems, meanwhile, offer time-tested alternatives where mediation is rooted in accountability, not profit, yet these are systematically sidelined by the 'expertise' narrative. The solution lies not in reforming intermediaries but in dismantling the conditions that create them: institutional trust deficits, financialized diplomacy, and the erasure of marginalized voices. History shows that when publics reclaim direct participation—whether through citizen assemblies in Tunisia or indigenous courts in Colombia—the middleman economy falters, revealing its true nature as a tool of control rather than liberation.