I had the experience, that things people identify as "stupid decisions" are often just "economical decisions"

For example, a company I worked for had the best technology, but bad UI and the competitors had good UI, but their tech was old and inaccurate.

For years we thought they were imbeciles, because they didn't update their tech and we would smash them in the future, because they cannot catch up with us.

But in the end the customers bought the software with the better UI and didn't look behind the scenes.

So their decision was logical. Why pour money and time in parts of the software when noone wants to pay for this.