> If you are doing something that has inherent value — extracting gold from a mine, performing music, working a factory line — you are the top of funnel for value creation.

The standard "how come patrons at a bar pay $10 for a drink but I only make $15 / hour when I serve twenty drinks an hour" argument.

The answer of course is because you didn't create the bar, you didn't secure all the necessary supplies and amenities to run it and ultimately you're not liable for what happens to it. In essence if the bar loses money each month you're still owed a paycheck.

And ultimately that's why raw materials and content DON'T have inherent value (e.g. dug up gold sitting in a mine shaft, the best song ever buried in your notebook).

What they have is POTENTIAL value if the infrastructure exists to get them processed and to the locations where people want them and if people are willing to put skin in the game to bet it will pay off.

And that need for infrastructure is the reason that argument always falls apart.

Co-opts are about the best feasible answer we have now, but it always seems to be the case that suddenly people have far more capitalistic notions about running a business when THEY become the majority risk holder for a new venture.