ronintexas :
Well.....I guess that is what he asked.....or was it?
I wasn't even sure if there was a point to this thread, so I kinda just went along with how the discussion was trending given that I found it interesting. Funnily enough, if we lived in some type of market socialist economy (which I am not an advocate for as I think while markets are efficient in the handling of logistics and the allocation of resources compared to central planning, that there's many negative aspects to them including incessant competition not necessarily being the only catalyst for innovation, as opposed to need and pleasure, rather than being wasteful in the amount of resources utilized in production to remain relevant to the market), we'd be able to buy everything at a lower cost by cutting out the capitalists, retail, factory or otherwise, while still being able to improve our living standards. So it'd be a win for consumers and workers as consumers/workers in some aspects. Still, monopolies so long as we live in a capitalist society are bad for consumers.