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Using massive scale and buying power to influence the price of a produce is adding something to the product. Can your electric company do that? No, they only de

• VLM 12y ago
  "Also, a pipe doesn't care what travels through it; does Wal-Mart sell every retail product in existence?" None of the employees you'll ever interact with, with the possible exception of the pharmacist and optician, will know anything at all about the boxes they put on the shelves. Thats a dumb pipe. None of the consumers know or care about how smart the HVAC thermostat is, or how JIT the truck drivers drop off the next pallet of kitty litter 3 hours before the store runs out of stock. Its not an applied technology question. Pipe manufacturing can be fairly technologically advanced, perhaps for aerospace work or car brake systems. Xray inspection of welds and fittings, seamless exotic metal alloys. Highly trained and experienced installers and quality assurance teams. Advanced 3-d cad to bend and place the pipe just so. None the less, its still fundamentally just a dumb pipe, stuff pours in one end of the pipe, then it comes out the other end of the pipe.