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This is simply not true. You (and perhaps most people) may have a difficult time discerning between high and low quality products, but both are readily available. That difficulty may be part of the problem why lower quality products dominate. Though I think it has more to do with cheaper prices. And while it's certainly true that many higher priced items are of similar quality as lower priced ones, higher quality products do exist.

As an example, I'll use flash memory devices (USB thumb drives). I used to consult for a firm that assembled these things as part of their business for use by corporate customers. They would buy flash memory chips from various chip vendors. You can, if you wish, purchase flash memory chips that have passed stringent tests. Or chips that have been rejected by other OEM's. Guess which ones cost more? Some of my client's customers demanded the absolute cheapest possible chips. So my client provided them (with warnings). The failure rates for the cheapest of the cheap could reach as high as 20% in a batch in our testing. The clients didn't care. Sadly, ALL the clients that didn't care were American companies. Not even mainland Chinese companies would use them.

There's a few interesting channels on youtube that deconstruct various products (from shoes to toasters) to see how high quality they are. It's quite instructive at how much different price points can differ (sometimes from the same company).

Discerning products on price is so much easier than on quality. That simple quantitative measure will always drive towards lower quality, to junk.

Buying quality is a tedious task and requires to invest your time. Buying expensive is by no means a guarantee for quality, think of the many re-labelers.

What YouTube? I watch Ave and project farm.

Air travel provides some insight into how market conditions determine quality (of service) in this case. Air travel used to be extremely expensive and out of reach for the majority of Americans until airline deregulation took effect in 1978. My grandfather flew for Pan Am, and air travel was special, with incredible levels of customer service, and a corresponding price tag.[0]

Deregulation was great because it opened up the market to more competition, and that led to lower prices. A true race to the bottom. Turns out, most people don't want to pay for more leg room, better service, more on time flights. They want the cheapest flight they can get (unless their company is footing the bill).

So whenever I hear someone complain about leg room on a flight, or not enough overhead stowage, or crappy food, I think about the choices ticket buyers have made over the last 40 years.

Price is almost always the first and most influential factor in a sale. Quality (whether actual quality or the illusion of quality) is usually way down the list of factors.

[0]https://gizmodo.com/traveling-in-a-boeing-747-in-the-1970s-w...

If you want to have the experience of the 1960s/1970s today, buy a first class ticket. It's fairly comparable in price (inflation adjusted) to the 60s/70s main cabin and you get plenty of leg room, plenty of overhead storage, and at least on Delta and Air France, fairly decent food.

Right now, I can book BOS->SAN->BOS for $945 in first class. Granted, COVID is happening, but I've bought that ticket in the past, pre-COVID for that same $1000 +/- a small margin.

“ The contemporary marketplace is littered with companies that used to produce high quality goods but are now selling away their former reputation to move overpriced garbage. See everything from Cole Haan (shoes) to Sears.”

I call this the Decontenting of America.

Since when did "high quality" become impossible? lol. Thats news to me. The fact you think Sears was "high quality" is telling. Maybe you have never bought or been exposed to "quality" in the first place?

I totally disagree with your assessment. 20 years ago it was harder to find quality products than it is today. I am a person that buys "quality", I support local & US companies whenever I can. There are so many excellent boutique companies for just about everything outside of shitty mass produced electronics. I just do not see your world at all, but then again, I don't mistake garbage retailers and company branding for quality.

I think you'd find it helpful to compare the quality of Sears Craftsman tools from 75, 50, 25 years ago and today. Unless you're either old enough to know first hand, happened to inherit older Craftsman tools, or have ties to people who are deeply interested in hand tools, you wouldn't know that at least that part of the Sears brand wasn't always associated with cheap garbage.

In general I find the degree of belligerent defensiveness in your post inexplicable given the topic at hand.

There was more labor sunk into the tooling to make those old tools, fancy forging dies and whatnot to forge fancy tools that are thin, light, etc.

Modern metallurgy is soooo much more consistent for equivalent or better outputs though. Thanks to modern electronic process control the dumbest dolts on 3rd shift in some factory in China can hit the spec they were told to hit and they can hit it for pennies.

Plastics, electronics, mechanical assemblies, hydraulics, everything, same story. Modern automation and process control has made the "high quality" of decades past something attainable on a budget.

So your Harbor Freight junk will generally hold its own against grandpa's Craftsman and Snap-On but it won't look good or feel good doing it and you white box wheel bearing will roll your tractor along just as well as the one it replaces.

I'm old enough and Sears was never good and there are a lot more specialized and cheaper tools now from harbor freight. I doubt you had good tools either if you considered them high quality, they were good for the warranties, not for their quality. You'd return the screwdrivers after using it to mix cement.

I'm curious what Sears tools you considered high quality.

I have a bunch of my grandpa's Craftsman tools from long before I was born, they were sold with lifetime warranties.

>It used to be possible to pay somewhat more to buy good quality products that would last for years or decades (obviously not for electronics)

My computer's from 2000s still work as does various 20+ year old CRTs. What products are you talking about? The nylon clothes that last forever, the food that doesn't go bad and has higher nutrition, the cheap micro USB that came with the thing that broke but the cable still works 9 years later?

What are these same price low quality goods you are plagued with?

The problem lies much deeper. If you buy quality you buy less. Nobody wants you to consume less. You have to spend your earned money as early as possible. Do not accumulate savings, even better live on lends. Thats the force driving us all to junk.

A poster said we should buy quality and another answered its no longer possible unless custom-manufactured. I fear thats true: to few bought quality to be a sustainable living for the producers.

It will be a great day on the Internet when people stop conflating citizens of a country with that country's government.