[pg]

The reason this seems counterintuitive is not that there's some dark matter of people who are somehow not subject to market forces, but simply that we're surprised by how much more cheaply things can be made by mass production. If a Big Mac were made by an individual farm family that raised the cattle and grew the wheat and the other ingredients, and then prepared it for you in quantity 1 in their kitchen, it would cost a fortune.

Our surprise at this variation is equivalent to the surprise of someone who doesn't know anything about programming at the fact that a piece of code can be made 100x faster.

[biohacker42]

Right, but there's also the government skimming from all kinds of productive business activities, to subside farming in the US. Thus making, corn, beef, etc, much cheaper then they would be without this market interference.

[pg]

True, but almost certainly less than 5x so, which is rounding error by comparison.