And the "people actually want worse, cheaper products."

iPhone sales numbers, as an example, say otherwise. If it was universally true that people just want cheap crap, everyone would rush to get whatever $200 budget motorola android the carrier is hawking for "free."

I could seen an argument that people want cheaper products, but certainly not worse. Airlines aren't the best example because margins are pretty low, but food concessions? Insane markup, consumer should expect them to just eat the cost of making a better product for cheaper, they certainly have the margin to do so.

There's a separate Veblen positioning, and Apple own it.

Same with personal matchmakers for high net worth individuals. They charge tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They're not necessarily any better at match making. But the users are paying a lot of money to reassure themselves of their superior status. And to filter out some of the more obvious riffraff.

In fact, a huge driver of practical pricing is narcissism. You're either selling it as a service ("luxury branding") or using it as lever to cynically extract money from those you consider inferiors. (Most corporates.)

Or both.

"More for less" and enshittification are both driven by narcissistic greed and devaluation of customers.

Some businesses start out like this. Some start out with good intentions. But generally once you get past a certain size many businesses become a competitive sociopath farm, with more and more sociopathy the higher you go.

Most internal and external interactions becomes an expression of dysfunctional values where the object of the exercise is to assert superior status and power and to deny quality service.