The Inner Monologue

Every few months, outrage flares up online about how much things cost. A bottle of soda. A pair of shoes. An electric car. Someone posts a viral comparison: “This costs five dollars to make and sells for fifty!” The crowd howls. The assumption, of course, is that the manufacturer is the villain — that some faceless corporation is pocketing obscene profits from our helpless dependence on stuff.

But that narrative is wrong — not just a little wrong, but fundamentally misguided. It reflects a profound misunderstanding of what you’re actually paying for when you buy something. Because the truth is: the cost of making most products is a small fraction of the price you pay. And even if the product itself were free to manufacture — literally cost nothing — you’d still be paying nearly the same amount for everything else that happens between the factory and your hands.

Let’s unpack that.

The Myth of the $5 Product

Take a can of soda. The beverage itself — the syrup, the carbonated water — costs mere pennies. The aluminum can costs far more than the liquid inside it. Then there’s the box that can comes in, the label design, the barcode, the warehouse, the truck driver, the gas, the refrigeration, the store clerk, the shelf space, and the credit card fee at the register. By the time it reaches your lips, a one-dollar can of soda has been touched by dozens of people, crossed hundreds of miles, and incurred costs at every single stage.

Even if Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or your local craft soda maker gave the product away at the factory door, you’d still be paying almost the same retail price — because what you’re really buying is logistics, convenience, storage, packaging, and service.

The same is true for shoes, for smartphones, for electric vehicles. People love to shout that “an iPhone only costs $400 to make!” as if they’ve uncovered a global conspiracy. Yet they forget that design, distribution, retail presence, shipping, warranty service, customer support, advertising, and compliance with thousands of international regulations all cost money. The phone might be made of cheap minerals and glass, but the ecosystem behind it — the one that makes it usable, updatable, and legal to sell in 190 countries — is not cheap at all.

What You’re Actually Paying For

Let’s strip the product away for a moment. Suppose you could magically conjure every physical good for free — soda, shoes, EVs, laptops, even food. You’d still have to pay for:

1. Packaging and labeling: Bottles, boxes, barcodes, seals, and environmental compliance labels.
2. Transportation: Fuel, trucking, loading, warehousing, insurance, and spoilage.
3. Retail operations: Rent, electricity, wages, theft, and point-of-sale technology.
4. Taxes and fees: Local, state, and national levies; recycling fees; licensing.
5. Marketing and distribution: Ads, endorsements, retail placement, and delivery networks.
6. Profit margins: For every link in that chain, not just the manufacturer.

Remove the factory cost entirely, and the world doesn’t suddenly become free. Instead, what you’ve done is reveal that the factory wasn’t the expensive part. The system that moves, sells, protects, and profits from the product — that’s where the cost lives.

The EV Thought Experiment

Let’s take something big and modern: the electric vehicle. Imagine that a new EV rolls off the assembly line for absolutely nothing. The batteries, motors, body, paint, glass, and software all appear for free. Would a dealership just hand it to you for zero dollars? Of course not.

Even before you touch the car, there are unavoidable costs:

Shipping from the factory to the dealership

Dealer preparation and cleaning

Licensing, insurance, and taxes

Employee wages and training

Showroom rent and utilities

Marketing and brand infrastructure

Charging and service infrastructure

Add it all up, and you’d still pay roughly $10,000–$15,000 before tax — even though the car was free to build. If that sounds absurd, it’s because most of us have never been taught to separate production cost from economic cost.

The Illusion of “Corporate Greed”

When consumers complain that “manufacturers are ripping us off,” they’re not seeing the whole picture. They’re confusing value creation with value delivery. Manufacturers create the product — but what you’re paying for is the delivery of that product through a vast, complex, and legally regulated world.

Consider the fast-food burger. The patty, bun, and cheese might total 75 cents in raw ingredients. But the price at the counter is $3 or more. Why? Because someone has to cook it, serve it, wrap it, clean up after it, keep the lights on, manage food safety inspections, pay property taxes, run ads, and make a small profit. If all the food arrived magically free every morning, you’d still pay two-thirds of the current price. Not because of greed, but because of reality.

That’s the part people don’t like to hear. The fantasy of a world where everything costs what it’s “worth” assumes a world without infrastructure, without labor, and without friction — a world that doesn’t exist.

Manufacturing Is Not the Villain — It’s the Foundation

Manufacturing is actually one of the least profitable links in the chain. The margins for most factories are razor-thin. The real money is in distribution, branding, and retail — the very systems that consumers rarely think about. When you see a $120 pair of running shoes, the factory probably sold them to the brand for $25. The brand sold them to a retailer for $60. The retailer sold them to you for $120. At each step, everyone covers their costs and adds their slice of profit. That’s not theft; that’s how an economy functions.

Blaming manufacturers for the cost of a product is like blaming the farmer for the price of a restaurant meal. The farmer grew the wheat, but the waiter, the chef, the dishwasher, the landlord, the health inspector, and the delivery truck driver all need to get paid too. The price you pay isn’t for wheat; it’s for everything that happens after the wheat is grown.

The Real Lesson: What We Value Isn’t the Object

If we’re honest, we don’t buy things because of their material cost. We buy them for their function, convenience, and identity. The extra $10 on a pair of shoes isn’t for leather; it’s for comfort. The extra $30 on a phone isn’t for metal; it’s for reliability and design. The markup isn’t just capitalism — it’s civilization. It’s the infrastructure of comfort, safety, and predictability that makes the modern world livable.

If all manufacturing became free tomorrow, the grocery store, the mall, and the dealership wouldn’t disappear. They’d still charge you — not for the object, but for the journey it takes to get that object to you.

Conclusion: Ignorance Is Expensive

So when consumers lash out at manufacturers for the cost of a product, they’re attacking the wrong part of the system. The physical making of things is already the cheapest link in the economic chain. The true expense is everything wrapped around it: packaging, transport, compliance, labor, logistics, and the thin layer of profit that keeps it all moving.

To understand modern prices is to understand that value isn’t in the object — it’s in the orchestration. You’re not paying for a product; you’re paying for a performance involving thousands of people across continents. And if you still believe manufacturers are to blame for high prices, then you’ve mistaken the opening act for the entire play.