[Merrill]

There are only a limited number of markets where large numbers of buyers and sellers transact for commodities of well understood characteristics.

The fundamental transaction of capitalistic societies is the "deal", where sellers vary the benefits of their products and conceal their deficits and where buyers conceal their willingness to pay as well as the exact thing they want to buy. Typically there are no more than two or three sellers (e.g. Airbus and Boeing) or two or three buyers (e.g. the market for very advanced fighter aircraft).

The first thing you learn in business school is that you must have product differentiation and must at all costs avoid being in a commodity business..