The spate of inflation following the 2020–2021 pandemic led politicians to search for a villain to blame other than their own spending programs or an ill-timed monetary expansion. We’ve been told that much of the blame should fall on “greedy” corporations, which supposedly used the post-pandemic environment to raise prices as well as reduce the size of their offerings, or what President Joe Biden referred to as “shrinkflation.”

The Biden administration also apportioned a modicum of blame for inflation—and a host of other societal ills—on “middlemen,” the entities that facilitate transactions between producers and consumers. The administration has pursued a variety of lawsuits against what it perceives to be powerful middlemen who have exploited their position to make money without providing value to the market in proportion to their income. Congress has also introduced legislation attempting to rein in the group.

Intermediation / Ascribing various economic ills to middlemen is not new. For instance, Lenin’s writings before the Russian Revolution often denounced the evils of middlemen, and the Russian Revolution made the “bourgeois proletariat” enemies of the state. But the breadth of the current attacks on their role in the US economy has been almost unprecedented in a market economy.

However, such rhetoric is best construed as little more than agitprop: Market intermediaries that have success in today’s economy generally do so because they offer services valued by both buyers and sellers. They often streamline transactions or, in many cases, facilitate competition among sellers. They may help buyers get lower prices while promoting other cost-saving services in combination with linking buyers and sellers. What’s more, blaming them for the inflationary spike that’s now receding is simply nonsensical, and no scholar has provided any serious explanation otherwise.

In the following special section, three scholars weigh in on the value provided by middlemen in the US and global economy. Alex Reinauer discusses the lawsuits the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have initiated against Apple and Amazon that allege their platforms—the Apple App Store and Amazon’s Marketplace—charge sellers too much for access. Ron Bird explains how credit card companies have greatly facilitated a payments revolution across the globe, making it easier for us to buy goods and services anywhere in the world. Finally, Anthony Lo Sasso discusses how the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of legislators have demonized pharmacy benefit managers, which manage the drug formularies for insurers, and attribute high drug prices to their machinations rather than the high cost of drug development and testing.