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… is from page 128 of David Friedman’s excellent 1996 book, Hidden Order [2] (original emphasis):
It is sometimes said that middlemen – retailers and wholesalers – merely move things about while absorbing some of the value that other people have produced. But all anyone does is to move things about – to rearrange from less to more useful. The producer rearranges iron ore and other inputs into automobiles; the retailer rearranges automobiles on a lot into automobiles paired up with particular customers. Both increase the value of what they work on and collect their income out of that increase.