Robin Lee wrote:
Really - it's all the fault of the internet.... economics is a much more
exact "science" today than it ever has been - consumers are much closer to
having "perfect knowledge" than before.... all that ECON 101 theory has a
lot more real world direct relevance than it did a decade ago....

The Internet is just the latest in a long series of improvements.
When Grog the cave man needed a new pointed stick, and his neighbor Ug
in the next cave was selling pointed sticks for 3 rocks, Grog paid up
the three rocks or made his own pointed stick. Little did he know
that on the other side of the hill, the going rate for pointed sticks
was just 2 rocks, and if you bought 6 of them at once, they threw in
an antelope jaw for free.

Then along came the Sears catalog, and you could order pointed sticks
at 3 for 2 rocks and 99 pebbles (and no sales tax!) from some town
far, far away, made by people who you've never met.