In the StarTrek style future you could get anything you need for free. We're just exiting the era where we were having anything we wanted for $9.99 or whatever low silly price the people in Guangdong and Dongguan were ready to accept. Is there a difference between the free and low silly price? Yes, the low silly price still makes you not-that-wasteful like the free could. Anyway, it is the end of an era.

And it wasn't just era of cheapness, it was also an era of variety, as many trinkets which were economical to produce for the whole world wouldn't be economical to produce in/for the walled tariff gardens.