What people seem to be looking for here is some kind of purchasing co-op which can then have greater negotiating leverage with developers than an individual customer.
The problem is, Apple isn't that -- it doesn't have a duty to the user, it has a duty to Apple shareholders, so what it does will be for their benefit and not yours unless they happen to coincide. Which they won't in enough cases that you don't actually benefit on net. It's not in your interest to have developers paying 30% and destroying the marginal developer and providing other developers with fewer resources to make better apps, or to have apps rejected just because they compete with Apple's, or deterred from being developed because developers become unwilling to risk their investment being wiped out by the opaque rejection process.
Meanwhile if you want the purchasing co-op, go set it up. So that it's using the market power of all the store's customers to get concessions from developers (and Apple), but is a co-op owned by and acting in the interests of the users instead of a for-profit monopoly acting in the interests of itself. Unless Apple is preventing anyone from creating that, right?
The problem is, Apple isn't that -- it doesn't have a duty to the user, it has a duty to Apple shareholders, so what it does will be for their benefit and not yours unless they happen to coincide. Which they won't in enough cases that you don't actually benefit on net. It's not in your interest to have developers paying 30% and destroying the marginal developer and providing other developers with fewer resources to make better apps, or to have apps rejected just because they compete with Apple's, or deterred from being developed because developers become unwilling to risk their investment being wiped out by the opaque rejection process.
Meanwhile if you want the purchasing co-op, go set it up. So that it's using the market power of all the store's customers to get concessions from developers (and Apple), but is a co-op owned by and acting in the interests of the users instead of a for-profit monopoly acting in the interests of itself. Unless Apple is preventing anyone from creating that, right?