No joke, my final statistics class I had to take for my computer science degree back in the late 1990s would very frequently use as a sample problem "here is the run statistics of some industrial creation process, how much excess quality can we statistically remove from the process in order to hit metrics, but only barely?"

Even back then, long before the word "enshittification" was coined, it made me squirm.

It did make a bit more sense back then. In the early 20th century there was a lot of utterly massive overproduction that greatly increased the price of some good for everyone while not giving improved service. I recall a house a relative had, which has about an 18"x18"x12" cast iron grating to distribute forced air between two floors. Unbelievably overproduced for the purpose. In the 1990s quality was still decent, and overproduced in some areas. But the trend was clear, and yea verily these 30 years later, it most certainly continued.