I'd imagine it more as a social club where the membership fee is an annual $99 but you still have to pay for drinks and tip the staff.

Apple's 30% (which is 15% for small devs) isn't a tax but a commission. In return for a share of revenue Apple provide easy access to 1bn customers, marketing/visibility, dev guides, unlimited hosting, update pushing, bug finding, API security, payment processing, deals with sales taxes and local consumer laws and issues refunds. They also maintain a platform with nearly 0% chance of piracy and do not take any cut from ad revenue.

Apple are guilty of a lot of things but being unfair to developers isn't one of them.