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40 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 13 Mar \ on: Can careerism give rise to products with no natural market demand? econ
I had never thought about this, but it certainly seems like something that must be happening.
Likely there have been games that were known to be trash from the outset and various other product lines that were only initiated because it was a job expectation. I know there's academic work that was only done because someone was expected to do academic work (that might even be an enormous share of it).
It's a similar logic to Public Choice Theory (maybe it is just Public Choice Theory), but applied to firms.
Oh, for sure most academic research is like that, but I'm not sure what the analogy to natural demand would be there, haha.
I'm sure in gaming there have been times where companies pushed out games in specific genres simply because it was the hot thing to do, despite it being a really poor fit for their portfolio/expertise.
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It seems like your point is about individual actors within a company, so I'm imagining a software engineer might be promoted to a position where leading development of a game is expected, but they don't have a good idea, so they just do something.
The natural demand for academic research is the dozen or so popular articles every year that get people to subscribe to Science or Nature, plus the two or three popular non-fiction books. You could probably throw some finance newsletters into that mix, as well.
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It’s like professional sports especially basketball
Who benefits from a viral highlight? The person not the team and certainly not the coach or owner
I suppose the fans benefit too
Launching unlimited three point shots is great for money ball but terrible for fans
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I think the moneyball point is more relevant. Sports are an entertainment product, but the players aren't trying to entertain, they're trying to do some combination of winning and getting paid.
Moneyball gets them more winning, but it's less desired by the consumers.
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