&gt; To start with, transferring data uses electricity, so I don&#x27;t follow your logic.<p>Given that you <i>totally</i> misunderstood my second statement, I&#x27;m not surprised that you don&#x27;t follow my logic. The difference in cost to run a wired network with a given capacity -whether that network is being utilized at 0% or 100%- is effectively zero.<p>&gt; So is the marginal cost of each electron or H2O molecule.<p>Again, you misunderstood my second statement, so it&#x27;s not too surprising that you&#x27;d say this.<p>You have to find and expend fuel to run electron pumping equipment. The cost of each unit of fuel is non-zero. You have to <i>find</i> and <i>treat</i> H2O. Most power plant fuels, and <i>all</i> H2O is a finite resource.<p>We don&#x27;t have to find and refine byte caches buried deep within the Earth. Bytes are free. And -again- a network costs the same whether it&#x27;s pumping 0 bytes, or all of the bytes it can.