8 Detailed shape and size of capitals at Back-of-the Moon

If we ourselves had not been the contractors — hence the makers of the buildings in the true sense — it would have been inordinately expensive to follow this process. It would have cost immense time and effort to get the changes made, to persuade the contractor to do it, then to pay for the change orders, and so forth. In practice it would have been wholly unfeasible.
Since we were makers — since we were building the buildings ourselves, and had responsibility for both money and construction — it was possible for us to do it.

Sounds a lot like the kind of vertical integration that makes companies like Apple so successful.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/15 All Building as Making#