Electricity de-reg

[Jordan Hayes]

> I still don't understand all that accounting, projecting kinda stuff
> but you got a product, you got a consumer, and the more middle-men it
> takes to get that product to the consumer, the more you gotta split
> any profit among players.  Is there something more to it than that?

In this case you may be right, but in general there are certainly cases
where adding a layer makes it cheaper: if the layer you add has a lower
cost structure than the one it interposes.  Imagine a path from A to C
... if the cost of A->C is greater than some new (A->B + B->C) then it
can make sense.

Certainly that works for at least _one_ level of distribution all the
time: producer direct to consumer is almost never an efficient way to
go.  Sometimes you can get many levels involved and it still makes
sense.  Gasoline is probably a good example product where the addition
of several distribution layers helps out quite a bit, since each step
is fairly specialized.

/jordan