| There's an exceptionally strong tendency, though there are factors which can temper it. Luxury goods, Veblen goods, and virtue / honest signalling, generally, avoid rampant RttB effects -- Whole Foods itself would be an example, Apple another. Untrammeled competition on the mass market of complex goods almost always tends toward RttB. It seems that there's an exceedingly strong and pervasive Gresham's Law dynamic across multiple domains, which I've been looking into. What keeps this from becoming total seems to be a mix of factors. Apple, for example, as a small fraction of either mobile (15%) or desktop (5%) markets, by unit sales, but has profit margins at a level which make it the most highly-valued joint-stock corporation in the world. It achieves this through a focus on some elements of product quality -- I wouldn't call Apple hacker-friendly, in the same way Linux or FreeBSD are (despite similarities), but it's been far more user friendly than Microsoft in many regards, if you're willing to pay a premium. And a certain portion of the market gets that. (The dynamic in the case of mobile is similar: more expensive than Android, not hacker-friendly, but vastly less aggrevating to use for the somewhat-discerning user.) Essentially, if you're going to move off the bottom, you may be able to, but you're going to be limited to a certain niche. If there are very large scaling efficiencies to size, even that becomes a challenge. You'll find similar stories across various products and services. Generally, the smaller the market (in terms of total buyers), and more discerning, the more likely a higher-quality product can survive. With market size (and non-discerning customers) comes worse product. |