Perhaps a bit of both Donkeyman, but it’s a case of supply and demand and you can’t blame these companies for making money. However, when most companies were small family run businesses production would have been local and the supply of raw materials would have been kept to a low level and demand probably outstripped supply.
But these big multinationals can produce stuff on a global scale, so they have either driven the the small guy out of business or bought them out and consequently can supply in bulk and ship it across the world,
hence all the cheap far eastern products than now adorn most of the shelves in our shops, and contributed to growing unemployment in the UK. Globalism is now destroying the planet and it’s been blamed on climate change…
Sorry you are unable to run Donkeyman…