The term "enshittification" is used a lot these days. But there is this pattern where human organizations -- be it companies, codebases, countries and many othe

The term "enshittification" is used a lot these days. But there is this pattern where human organizations -- be it companies, codebases, countries and many other examples -- undergo this transformation from simple, humble and efficient systems to complex, arrogant and inefficient ones. I wouldn't dare to speculate on the cause of this devolution. There are theories like becoming publicly traded for companies, and subsequently execs chasing short term profits to make shareholders happy, or elected officials chasing after votes for the next immediate election cycle. But it would be nice if there was some sort of a large scale in-depth study on the topic and research into solutions for it. Honestly, the more I think about so many issues, the more I feel like there needs to be a dedicated field into the study of incentives and how they shape the systems and organizations humans build and maintain. Everything from google search being terrible to climate change feels like it all has a shared root cause of misaligned or defective incentives. Perhaps existing fields like game theory, economics or systems design should cover this topic? Either way, our systems design methodology is faulty and this fault is nearly universal and systemic, affecting all humans in almost every area of our lives. One theory I have (full disclosure: subjects I am not too familiar with) is economics and game theory, specifically the "Nash equilibrium" game theory, which as I understand boils down to "everyone should participate in the system, only taking into account their own success and profit, and nothing more than that" might be at fault. Or maybe, it simply codified the innate faulty organizational instinct we have?