Well, I beg to differ, but unfortunately the vast majority of corporations do not operate at optimum efficiency. How do you explain, surplusses, shortages, windfall profits, buyouts, bailouts, bankruptcies, failures, etc. It sure would have been nice, if we lived in your "optimal world" I wouldn't have spent wasted days the past three or four Christmas Holidays looking for those "hard-to-find," "top-of-the-line" hot new toys that my kids always want - and never finding them BTW. A balance between supply and demand (the optimal point) is often a tricky and elusive thing in a free, open-market system. In an "all things being equal" kind of setting it works great but unfortunately, we don't live in that kind of system. We live in a system where the supply-siders have the upper-hand, like it or not. Outside of necessities, the business world has an interesting way of "convincing" consumers that our demand for their products should be greater - and more oft than not, we're happy to just play along.