There are countless keynote speakers, business consultants and best-selling books that will tell you how technology is disrupting everything and eating middlemen for lunch. From travel agents to newspaper publishers and stockbrokers, everywhere you look, tech companies are out to collect the bounties on rent-seekers’ heads.

There tend to be somewhat fewer opeds by high-profile thought-leaders, however, pointing out the obvious corollary, which is that tech companies are, in reality, not so much removing all those greedy rent-seeking middlemen, as they are, well, replacing them.