How far down this rabbit hole are you willing to go?

Can the electric company ask for a 30% cut on anything you buy using their electrons? People would just build their own distribution lines to the electric company down the road if they didn't like it.

How about your landlord charging a 30% cut if you want to take your amazon package inside his house? Don't like it, go build your own home.

Don't forget the company that made your car, the company that supplied gas for that car, the company that built the refrigerator that keeps your food cold, etc when you go get groceries. I think that comes to 90+% going to other companies.

> How about your landlord charging a 30% cut if you want to take your amazon package inside his house? Don't like it, go build your own home.

That actually happens in commercial real estate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_rent

For the landlord example - sure, if for some bizarre reason a tenant would agree to that. Presumably no one would, and so the landlord would lose out and stop.

It's all fun and games until a single mega real estate corporation owns 80% of all housing stock. In real estate that can't happen, in tech it can.

Simple as long as there is more than one power company for you to choose from and they are not colluding to fix their prices, the power company is free to ask for whatever they want. This is not a problem that can occur in a competitive market, though.

Would not buying an Apple device put you in a similar position as having no access to electricity? Can you not buy a different and phone that allows you to freely install any software you want too without having to pay 30% to any third party?

Thinking that consumers and developers will collectively torpedo both android and Apple by supporting some unheard of 3rd mobile OS made by a benevolent company is a fantasy at this point. Just like saying, if consumers and towns don’t like Bell telephone they can just run their own phone lines all over the country couldn’t they?

Well it's not. Remember when Apple started? Nokia was big back then. There were a lot of other options. Yet here we are complaining.

> It's their platform.

And it's the user's phone, which they should be free to use however they see fit. Even if that means installing software from places other than Apple's store.

There are some pretty big differences between a free and diverse marketplace vs a duopoly with a massive moat.

"Just buy from someone else" works great for buying furniture or socks, not so much for home electricity or smart phones.