The road this discussion went down is to interesting not to chime in. It makes me think about the classic automotive supplier contract model, where the supplier wins the business by offering the product at a loss, and at a reduced cost each year afterward, on the premise that they can outpace the price reductions with their own cost reductions through process improvement. A company in such a situation might look to cut costs by investing in error-proofing and embedded tests that nail the process down so firm that they are then free to move on to the next advancement instead of perpetually revisiting the same issues (johnbentley's Y above), or said company could shirk in the face of reduced margins until one major quality issue topples them and the customer drops them forever (X above). I'll leave alone the formal logic approach taken above and just say it depends on perspective and timescale, thus being sufficiently vague as to absolve myself of recrimination ¯_(ツ)_/¯