Can't say I've ever felt that massive corps and the people that work there are super productive. In many instances they seem less productive than government.

If the small companies were productive they'd be big companies.

This assumes that every small company wants to be a big company.

Except the many that are productive because they're NOT big companies.

Even without nationwide economies of scale, Michigan regularly has businesses selling weed vape carts for <$10 apiece. I don't know how much cheaper we want the weed to be, honestly. It's already at least 10x cheaper than the cheapest alcoholic beverage on a buzz-for-buzz basis.

Corporate dispensaries, which are very prevalent, are notoriously lower quality

What SMB has the luxury of being notoriously unproductive? Economies of scale are very real and tend to make larger businesses more efficient, it's true, but you'll find that causes SMBs to be lean and mean to remain competitive.

There are many many ways to look at this data, but here's one: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr....

Bigger companies can pay a lot more because they are more productive. And further research has shown its the same pool/type of people at each.

Your implied point that prices will drop with the introduction of interstate competition and access to finance and interest by mega-corps is well taken. You are certainly correct, there.

Notwithstanding grey-market limitations, people have their motives for accepting the inefficiency of starting or staying small. Potential, for example.