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Their wordsThe long tail of generic brands on e-commerce platforms is a textbook lemons market: good products get drowned out by these alphabet soup products, who use their higher margins to buy sponsored placement in search results.
Their wordseveryone can be acting reasonably, pursuing their own interests, and things still get worse for everyone. No one has to be evil or stupid: the platform does what's profitable, sellers do what works, buyers try to make smart decisions, and yet the whole system degrades into something nobody actually wants.
Their wordsBut outputs (code, design, the products themselves) are the load-bearing work-the actual prerequisites for the outcomes desired. Focusing on outcomes while ignoring outputs means hiding in abstractions and absolving oneself of accountability.
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