Retail is a really fascinating concept to me because it does produce value in the sense that the retailer is connecting the consumer with a product that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Retail is probably the oldest trade and has been essential to the development of civilization. It’s an incredibly fine line between that and rent seeking though. Ideally the surplus created by socialized production and industrialization should do away with retail and to a limited extent it has, but instead private ownership has flipped it totally on its head so the whole thing is marketing and rent seeking now.