Not sure how that dismisses the claim. He argues that this is not a tax because Apple is not just a payment provider, but provides a marketplace? that's exactly what any state does with a tax, finance the commons. Except that in this case, Apple is staking out its own territory, competitors excluded, playing digital landlord.
Apple didn't merely "stake out" its own territory. It created its own territory where none previously existed. And being a landlord is a perfectly legal occupation, even if it doesn't win you many friends.
In my personal opinion (and I recognise that this is a controversial view on Hacker News) Apple should be entitled to the same thing Epic Games asks for—which is the right to decide how much their intellectual property is worth when used by other developers to build commercial products.
