Disaggregation Theory

1. Prologue: credit where it is structurally due

This essay is written in explicit dialogue with Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory. If you have a mental model for why the modern internet concentrated, you almost certainly have it because Thompson named the mechanism cleanly, without mysticism and without self-soothing. He deserves the high seat at the table.

Disaggregation Theory is not a repudiation of that work; it is its mirror under new primitives. Aggregation Theory described an era in which platforms owned the choke points. Disaggregation Theory describes what happens once the choke points are replaced by neutral rails.

Aggregation was not fate. It was infrastructure scarcity.

2. Aggregation, stated bluntly

Platforms aggregated because they could simultaneously:

• Aggregate demand at scale
• Control discovery (ranking, defaults, distribution)
• Reduce supplier differentiation into interchangeable inventory
• Monetize via rents (ads, commissions, take rates)
• Enforce dependence through switching costs and visibility risk

3. The structural break: the new primitives

Disaggregation begins when two conditions become cheap at scale:

• Agentic coordination: negotiation, bundling, and constraint reasoning executed by agents, not humans.
• Neutral clearing: settlement and enforcement moved from platforms into a rule-bound infrastructure layer.

The argument is not that “AI changes everything.” The argument is narrower and more severe: when coordination and clearing become infrastructural, the aggregator’s central advantage becomes optional.

4. Disaggregation Theory: the core claim

When negotiation is agentic, settlement is neutral, and enforcement is auditable, intermediation fragments and platform rents compress.

The market does not “disintermediate.” It multiplies intermediaries. That distinction matters. The old intermediaries were dominant because they owned the transaction. The new intermediaries are substitutable because they sit above shared rails.

5. The new topology

Old topology (aggregation):

Users → Platform → Suppliers
        ↑
     Rent extraction

New topology (disaggregation):

Users / Agents / Communities
  ↓
Multiple contextual intermediaries
  ↓
Neutral rails and infrastructures
  ↓
Coordinated suppliers

The center of gravity shifts from platform scale to contextual trust. The rails do not care who the intermediary is; they care that the transaction complies with contractual terms.

6. Why this is stable (and not merely fragmentation before the next reconsolidation)

Historically, fragmentation reconsolidated because:

• Settlement re-centralized
• Discovery reconcentrated into defaults
• Supplier coordination remained impossible
• Enforcement was weak and opaque

Disaggregation is stable when:

• Clearing is neutral
• Enforcement is automated and auditable
• Exclusivity is narrow (clearing integrity), not broad (market capture)
• Supplier coordination exists at the clearing layer

7. The moral hazard: when “platform” becomes a synonym for “tax”

Aggregators will insist that their rents are the cost of order. Sometimes, briefly, this is true. The longer truth is darker: once an aggregator owns defaults and ranking, it stops optimizing the market and starts optimizing extraction.

Disaggregation Theory is not utopian. It simply asserts that extraction loses durability when: (i) negotiation can happen cheaply (agentic commerce), and (ii) settlement can happen without conceding governance to the extractor.

8. Ben Thompson saw it before anyone else

Thompson’s contribution was not a clever phrase. It was a structural lens sharp enough to cut through rhetoric. The point of Disaggregation Theory is to keep that same standard: name mechanisms, not vibes.

If Aggregation Theory explained why the internet centralized, Disaggregation Theory explains the condition under which centralization stops being the equilibrium. Thompson remains the king, Disaggregation Theory is merely the next chapter on new rails.