[ElevenLathe]

I'm not sure it really is. Dial your time machine back to Victorian London and I bet you would find lots of similarly-run factories. As another poster pointed out, the choices are essentially 1) be honest that you are kind of a bad factory, and can't really produce anything that people want or 2) pretend that you are a great factory, get some business, learn and iterate. Eventually you can honestly promise high quality, but you have to survive that far first.

[viraptor]

> Dial your time machine back to Victorian London

You may want to check with Ea-Nasir about his copper ingots... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

[TheCoelacanth]

I don't think it was intended to be the earliest example, just one that is more relatable to westerners.

[grantsch]

Yes you are correct that lying and cheating does have a long history