@ChuckMcManis I'm not really sure what you're trying to say, and I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say. I certainly don't understand what point you are trying to make with your analogy about ranchers and beef cows.
The observation basically comes down to this:
Acquiring customers is (as you say) hard, and if one is in any kind of competitive environment, unethical behaviour will, in general, win. In part this is simply because for most customers the unethical behaviour goes unnoticed ... this is deliberate obfuscation by the platform involved ... but in part it's because people will go "Ooh! Shiny Thing" and not bother looking for any ethical implications.
Finally, like all similar observations, it's not a quantitative mathematically rigorous formula.
