Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know chef's knives from Adam, but I'll counter that with some stuff I do know about, which is hand tool woodworking. TL;DR: I buy handmade saws because they are demonstrably superior. Time was you could not buy a quality Western saw new for love or money[1]. And by "time was" I mean "as recently as six to ten years ago". Independence Tools were the first people since the 40s, probably earlier, to make a dovet…
Actually, mass-produced chef's knives seem to be underrated; the stamped knife you can buy from Victorinox is, if you aren't way more fussy than the typical cook, likely to outperform a handcrafted aggressively-sharpened 440 high-carbon blade. Finer materials and carefully sharpened edges require a higher amount of care. There's a legitimate joy to take in using competently hand-crafted chef's knife, particularly if…
Also the definition of "sharp" relevant in a kitchen is very different from the definition of "sharp" used in, say, a woodworking context; using a woodworking chisel on a tomato will actually squash it because the edge isn't serrated enough to tear the skin. But for certain applications precision and balance really matter and professionals will, in my experience, gravitate toward "good but replaceable" tools for that application and use them to death. As an example I know a butcher's daughter who waxes rhapsodic on her father's insistence on keeping his (carbon steel and meticulously prepared and put away) knives razor sharp at all times but especially right before he was about to make even the simplest cut. Said knives looked like bananas by the end of their lifespan, having been sharpened to the maximal extent.