If leadership is that inept, then this is likely only 1 of many problems they are creating for the organization. I would be looking for alternative employment ASAP.
Regarding your Luddite reference, I think the cost-vs-quality debate was actually the centerpiece of that incident. Would you rather pay $100 for a T-shirt that's only marginally better than one that costs $10? I certainly would not. People are constantly evaluating cost-quality tradeoffs when making purchasing decisions. The exact ratio of the tradeoff matters. There's always a price point at which something starts (or stops) making sense.
A major problem of the way we have built our society in a way such that the wrong people end up with the most power and authority.
the majority of engineers across the industry feel the same way we do and yet there's little most of us can do unless we all decide to do something together :/
I'm not saying the industry is perfect, but if the scale of the missed opportunity is so large and so obvious to so many engineers, and we live in a world with tens of thousands of VC firms and probably millions of other avenues for funding like angels, incubators, and grant programs, it's hard to imagine 100% of them missing it. And it only takes 1 to take advantage.
The 10$ shirt becomes a much shittier proposal once, in addition to its worse looks, fit, and comfort, you factor in its significantly lower durability and lifespan. That's why the 100$ shirt still exists after all. Nevermind that the example is a bad one to begin with because low-price commodities like T-shirts are never worth fixing when they break, but code with a paid maintainer clearly is.
In an market bubble like the one we find ourselves in, longevity is simply not relevant because the financial opportunity lies precisely in getting off in the train right before it crashes. For investors and managers, that is. Developers may be allowed to change cars, but they are stuck the train.
It's sad how some of the doomed are so desperate to avoid their fate that they fall prey to promises they know to be bullshit. The argument for Wish and TEMU products is exactly the same, yet we can all see it for what it is in those cases: a particularly short-lived lie.