Once upon a time there was a new sandwich shop opened on the corner. Everyone in the area flocked to pay $1 for this sandwich because its filling was certified organic with a magic sauce.
They spent a lot of money on research and development, streamlined production line equipment spending an irreversible fortune, knowing that this is what the people wanted. Business boomed.
After a year or so, people who had previously bought these sandwiches told two people who told two people etc and before long demand had risen exponentially that people where paying $1000 to get to the front of the que for the same sandwhich.
The local council seeing multitudes of people lining the streets to the door could do little but put up street cameras and monitor the situation. How they could capitalize on this traffic was their main concern, hidden beneath a veil of security issues.
A smart entrepreneurial bread maker eventually set up his own sandwich shop and using the same base sauce (which was now available at the supermarket) made it possible for people to not only create their own sandwhich but with any filling they could imagine for only $1 and because the equipment used to create a production line had already been engineered they spent their R&D money on improving flow allowing ten times the amount of people to be served at a time
Now the two sandwhich shops were the best in their business but the original sandwhich shop started to lose customers to the later one but could not reduce the price in order to compete. The premium to get to the front of the que dropped to $300
However, the sandwich shop that improved on the original design was selling every kind of sandwich imaginable and people soon formed their own communities based on their appetites.
Once again the local council seeing multitudes of people lining the streets to the door could do little but put up street cameras and monitor the situation. Eventually the council mandated a flat tax on each and any store that sold these new sandwiches.
Many other entrepreneurial types tried to replicate the fame and fortune without much success. Some had the same sauce but with alternative fillings, some even tried to change the sauce. However they may have tried even to unashamedly copy the entire sandwich, they were still not as successful as the original sandwich shop, neither the later more successful one.
The problem was such that the companies providing raw ingredients had suffered a distinct drop in orders for alternative lines. So although demand for magic sauce was outweighing supply, their warehouses were full of stock that was no longer needed
Eventually, it came to pass that because of the massive success of the two businesses at the expense of the majority of alternative food outlets, the companies that sold other products, feeling the pressure from their shareholders, conspired to disrupt the transportation of magic sauce to both sandwich shops destroying them instantly.
ED: What's your moral of the story?
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