I don't think it's about the political system so much as the economic system.
Any economic system is an attempt to solve the core problem of how to best distribute resources to consumers of resources. But what happens at the point when ideal distribution is attained, and all consumers are satisfied? If the economy just shut down, it would be a social disaster, so instead it enters this kind of degenerate state you mention where marketing and advertising predominate over production and distribution. Like a star going supernova- all the useful fuel is burned up, but we must sustain the reaction somehow, so we have to turn to heavier and heavier elements.
There is an upside to this, actually order the money losing items at fast casual restaurants etc and it's a great deal.
PS: Also, look for companies that defect from the marketing game which allows them to sell very high quality products for cheap. Think store brand items etc.
> But what happens at the point when ideal distribution is attained, and all consumers are satisfied?
I don't think we are anywhere close that, nor that we can ever get there. What happened is that most low-hanging fruits of actual value got picked, to the point that sales & marketing started to have much better ROI than trying to invent and build better things. It's a gradual shift towards a zero-sum-game economy.
The reason we can't ever totally satisfy consumer demand is because of marketing itself. As much as the profession likes to pretend it's about informing consumers of available choices in a free market, it is more fundamentally about creating demand. If we had spent the last two centuries fulfilling the consumer demands of 1818 consumers, we'd have been "done" decades ago, worldwide, if not sooner. Instead, before we ever get to the "demand satisfied" state, our demands are manipulated by marketeers so that we never reach this equilibrium.
Any economic system is an attempt to solve the core problem of how to best distribute resources to consumers of resources. But what happens at the point when ideal distribution is attained, and all consumers are satisfied? If the economy just shut down, it would be a social disaster, so instead it enters this kind of degenerate state you mention where marketing and advertising predominate over production and distribution. Like a star going supernova- all the useful fuel is burned up, but we must sustain the reaction somehow, so we have to turn to heavier and heavier elements.