What is the economist term for (not) leaving money on the table? Revenue maximization?
Netflix has it both ways:
- Raises prices on its current customers - Sells ad space on its streams, devaluing the experience
I'm really getting at this: we as people have a tendency to optimize things beyond their optimal point. We can't leave well enough alone.
In the time it's taken me to post twice about how I've quit Netflix, I made enough to pay for the subscription. The cost isn't the point - I stopped because of the action, not the result.
I'm not really complaining, though. My job - SRE - basically depends on this tendency in others.
To your point, the experience has been devalued.
The content isn't as good as it once was IMO. The price continuously raised, the terms kept changing, and the proposition stopped making sense for me.
It overwhelmingly goes in one direction. A new sucker is born every day
The network effect of this is "the money machine must grow/demands more". They don't have to do this - everyone knows how well-paid their people are. It's a system of systems.
There's an academic understanding and then the practical one. Everyone stands to benefit from a Boogeyman