my goto explanation for this is the crappiest companies out there have highest profit margin simply because they have a whole host of bad practices available to pick from. that basically means they have most resources to burn on marketing & promotion.. egro most highly advertised stuff is what one should avoid the most.
Bad practices increase cash-on-hand at the expense of long-term outlook. That cash-on-hand can be funnelled into more bad practices.
It's kind of like a wooden building burning down: something that was previously in stable, long-term equilibrium state (no fire, no energy release, serving a useful purpose) switches suddenly to a runaway reaction (exponentially accelerating, pulling in more and more reactants from the environment, serving no useful purpose.)
