@karlauerbach@joebeone@internetsociety I completely agree that publishing and discussion CAN easily happen these days without intermediaries. A lot of the various Fediverse systems are a good step in that way.
My personal issue is that after decades of running my own systems, I don't want to anymore! I just want to write. I'll gladly pay or use an intermediary to take care of that for me.
Similarly, I'll use an intermediary for caching/CDN purposes so that pages load fast globally.