> I strongly dislike these nihilistic views of markets where consumer happiness (ie, reviews on Amazon, tech blogs, friends/family etc) is never factored in and people expect companies to merely look at price as the one and only factor.
It is nihilistic, but is it any less true?
Also, not price, profit. Revenue minus costs. It costs company to make a product make user happy, so if they can skip that without impacting their sales, they will - doing otherwise would be leaving money on the table.
> That's not how markets work, except in the lowest of the low end (where margins are already awful).
I argue that's how markets work in any highly competitive space.
> the market as a whole is incentivized to do the least amount work effort possible.
But isn't it? As a company, you want to make money. Existence of competition causes you to make less money. If you don't fight back this pressure, you'll get pushed out of the market. This incentive structure applies to all your competitors as well. This is exactly how competition makes products cost less.
It is nihilistic, but is it any less true?
Also, not price, profit. Revenue minus costs. It costs company to make a product make user happy, so if they can skip that without impacting their sales, they will - doing otherwise would be leaving money on the table.
> That's not how markets work, except in the lowest of the low end (where margins are already awful).
I argue that's how markets work in any highly competitive space.
> the market as a whole is incentivized to do the least amount work effort possible.
But isn't it? As a company, you want to make money. Existence of competition causes you to make less money. If you don't fight back this pressure, you'll get pushed out of the market. This incentive structure applies to all your competitors as well. This is exactly how competition makes products cost less.