Ninety-one percent of all houses sold in the United States are still sold through a real estate agent. Or look at the world of real estate sales. Far from killing the middleman, eBay has generated a thriving new breed. Many PowerSellers wouldnвЂ™t even be in business if it werenвЂ™t for eBay.

We trust them more than we trust the amateur eBay seller because we understand that they wonвЂ™t squander their hard-earned reputation by misrepresenting the quality of the goods theyвЂ™re selling. PowerSellers arenвЂ™t hawking their own collectiblesвЂ“theyвЂ™re retailers and resellers of other peopleвЂ™s goods, and the preeminent among them enjoy over $150,000 in sales per month. Although they make up only 4% of all eBay sellers, half of all eBay sales flow through them. These PowerSellers have become the siteвЂ™s most active and reputable users. But as the site evolved, middlemen emerged, first with handy stores like AuctionDrop and, eventually, with вЂњPowerSellersвЂќ hanging their virtual shingles on the site.

From its earliest days, anyone with a computer and Internet connection could post anything they wanted to sell on eBay-and find prospective buyers from all over the world. economy was made up of the efforts of middlemen at a time when middlemen were supposed to be drifting into irrelevance.Д¬onsider eBay. Daniel Spulber, the Kellogg School economist whoвЂ™s studied the matter more than anyone, calculated that back in 1999 middlemen contributed 25% to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States by 2010, the last year for which enough data was available, that had grown to 34%: more than a third of the U.S.

Herald of obliteration