> Coca-Cola doesn't "quietly water down" its product to save a few bucks. They know people will take a sip, say "oh that's not what i wanted", and go buy a Pepsi.

Coca-Cola is also mostly measurable and reverse-engineerable.

The Claude models are black boxes, and actively curtail distilling efforts.

How are you going to confidently tell the difference between it being slightly dumber, vs just having bad luck with your recent attempts?

Pepsi may not water down its product, but your local diner may well decide to put a little less ice-cream in its milkshakes if it thinks it can get away with it and most people won't be able to tell.