That would result in mass unemployment in some sectors of industry.

The problem is that as long as your competitor says 'yes' and you say 'no' the competitor will get the customer.

Customers should be firing companies that provide false information during the lead-up to a sale. Then the sales people can stay employed and everybody comes out ahead.

This is just how things work in a lot of industries.

You promise the world to make a sale, then once you've signed, work frantically to make the vision you sold a reality. If you were open and honest, you wouldn't sell a thing.

The only people who lose out are those who take salespeople on their word and don't get everything agreed in writing. Never take a salesperson on their word.

Companies who did this would be systemically outcompeted by companies who choose to look the other way when their salespeople overpromise. And you will find that in general, they are not saying "we have feature X as an available feature as of today" -- they say things like "feature X is under development" and work to upsell it/et cetera. It can be an extremely effective tactic for a lean company to explore the market without overinvesting in development, and it can be destructive behavior by salespeople to advance themselves at the cost of the company.

Like so many things, it's a balance, not an opposition.

I agree. But just because something should happen, doesn't mean that it will.

I don't work with a startup, or even in the tech industry, but this is an issue that takes up ~25% of my time. I have to keep pushing back on sales to make sure that they're not selling something that's physically impossible, or just plain stupid (but sounds good).

This is something that cuts across business in America in general, I think.