While everything requires some labor for its production, practically nothing can be produced by labor alone.
==Capital== complements ==labor== in the production process, but it also competes with labor for employment.
Capital tends to be scarcer and hence more expensive in poorer countries, while labor is more abundant and hence cheaper than in richer countries.
Poor countries tend to economize on the more expensive factor, just as richer countries economize on a different factor that is more expensive and scarce there, namely labor.
In the richer countries, it is capital that is more plentiful and cheaper, while labor is more scarce and more expensive.
==Efficiency== cannot be meaningfully defined without regard to human desires and preferences.
In a ==modern industrial economy==, many goods are mass produced, thereby lowering their production costs, and hence prices, because of economies of scale, but repairs on those products are still typically done individually by hand, without the benefit of economies of scale, and therefore relatively expensively.