Electricity is the most important thing because with basically zero cost you can stay in the game till everyone else collapses.
Electricity is indeed the most important thing, but just because you have cheaper electricity than the next guy doesn't mean you will necessarily survive longer than him, your operation cost, efforts, capital, ability to main the same hashrate and expand, can you fix gears or not? how much tax do you pay? how far away do you have to drive to get to the farm? how much cheap/free electricity do you have?
I would argue that the guy with $1m capital paying 6 cents will survive longer than the guy paying 3 cents but can only afford 2 mining gears of the old generation, you see, it's a whole package that needs to be better than the average in order to survive, the package has a dozen elements in it, electricity being at the top of the list doesn't make it the only thing that matters.
Hihi, but the guy with two S9s doesn't need a 1000sqm datacenter, no security guys, and no technicians, he will most likely fly under the radar so no income tax, and so on!
Of course, I know what you're saying but when I was pointing that out it was for a leveled scenario, two companies in the same country with the same capital and same plan, the one with 1 cent over the other will flop first unless he magically finds some angel investors willing to lose money! I find electricity costs to be the ultimate barrier, you can have everything else ready to go and dirty cheap or even free if you pay 17 cents/kwh you're going to go bankrupt!
I think you've guessed why I mentioned exactly 17 cents, lol!