Hi @lynncoyle1, thanks for the kind words. Bottled water is another great example, and it's also a great example because people have been so thoroughly convinced that their $3 bottles of "designer" water is superior... even though it is hauled out of the ground a couple of miles from where the city water plugs into the same aquifer. I'm not knocking bottled water as a functional necessity in parts of the world where most water is unfiltered and disease ridden, though.

Another favorite is building; houses. You take a pile of wood, nails, wiring, stone and pipes and whatever it takes to build a house, and it costs a certain amount of money. And then you add a "fair profit" for a builder. And yet? When plunk them down in Salina, Kansas... the finished house is $120K, while if you plunk them down in Seattle, WA the finished house is $800K. The SAME house, made with the SAME materials. And it's NOT just "land value" that's to blame... there's about $500K of "pure air" in that Seattle house.

At some point, that system HAS to "break."