Given on premise, "everyone" thinks their boss is a dope and they could do a better job.

If this were true, then companies built by disgruntled employees leaving their bosses to do said "better job" should be able to outcompete their former employers. Market pressure should push other competitors to adopt similar "better job" practices, and the "dope manager" problem should evaporate away.

But it hasn't. We'll even hear stories about companies that were started with this intention (e.g. Valve), only to later hear other stories about how the bosses are dopes.

I consider one of two possibilities: either there is no such thing as market competition, or the original "everyone" is not as smart as they think they are, and can't actually do a better job.

It could be that success turns you into a dope, but that doesn't change anything. The lack of ability to perpetually do a "better job" pushes us into the "no real market competition" scenario.

I'm actually on the fence as to which possibility I believe is the case. I suspect both are largely true, but which one is dominant is not clear.

As another example of "no real market competition" problem, consider that even small towns have multiple pizzarias, all of which are essentially identical, and equally shitty. They order their ingredients from the same vendors. They either order their equipment from the same vendors, or get it used from the previous pizzeria that went under because it's in a terrible location/ran by a dope, who themselves ordered everything from the same vendors. This "shitty pizzeria" model of markets states that store-front location and customer price biases are much stronger elements of success than product quality, as no pizzeria could afford the marginal cost of improving their product to attempt to capture a greater proportion of customers.

I think a lot of software gets made under the "shitty pizzeria" model. Most software consulting seems to be more about where the consultant is located than what the consultant can do. And in particular, I think a lot of the indie games market fits this market, made famous by memes showing rows upon rows of nearly identical icons in game app store listings.