Let's make quality the norm again

Australia gives the store primary responsibility and it seems to work well for them.

I think it just requires too much work. Your cynicism is unfair.

Also cheapest is just the simplest option, even though you know it is crap. I sometimes just give up on investing effort and time and money trying for better, because I've been repeatedly stung by expensive failures of top quality/brand items.

If I want a cordless drill, I don't want to have to learn about batteries, brands, or any esoterica relating to the quality of it.

For many goods I used to spend time looking at reviews, and cultivating my knowledge. I'm sick and tired of having to do that.

For cordless, I do like Makita, but I use a battery adapter (because their batteries are NZD250 instead of NZD50). But I usually buy a crappy bigstore brand for most cordless tools (a rebadged Einhell). They mostly work and they do a good replacement warranty.

People want a simple measure of quality.

Price doesn't work. Threadcount doesn't work for sheets (they cheat the numbers). Some brands are still worthwhile, but even that is becoming unreliable.

Some stores seem to have quality standards (in NZ Kmart goods seem mostly useable for the pricepoint, however our local 'The Warehouse' has gone downhill).

Many goods are now so complex that stores can't make a price versus quality compromise. Choosing a mobile phone is frustrating.

Complexity is the killer for choosing quality.

Our cheapest goods are surprisingly complex: e.g. socks.

You made this generalized statement probably from some propaganda you've read or some trauma you've experienced growing up. Yet, if you look at the current state of the situation its in clear decline. The only ways forward are to accelerate the decline and live with the consequences (ie. doing nothing) or to consider moving in the other direction(ie. leftist things).

In the US I think there are two sources of this mentality: 50% of the population don't have a passport so they have never seen how people in say Europe/Canada deal with this, EU/Canada/AUS/UK have higher standards and don't tolerate this kind of crap as much

Example: Hyundai removed immobilizers in their cars...but only in the US because Canada/EU had regulations requiring an immobilizer.

End result: Someone on TikTok discovered that you could steal cars with a screwdriver and a USB cable. This resulted in insurance costs shooting up, people stuck without cars due to lengthy repair times and overall lower quality of lives.

The braindead response that comes from people with OP's mentality would be "you should have researched the car better beforehand its all your fault".

Yea ok people with limited budgets and time looked at which cars had good reviews and Kia/Hyundai were winning many of those (likely BS ) awards like "North American Car of the year".

People are already stressed for time trying to survive in this jungle and now the "free market" played games with them and anyone suffering from this might be having a worse life now because of this mess. Why are they having to spend all their miniscule free time just to not be screwed?

Wouldn't it have been better if we had European style regulations that would have established a minimum standard that all cars in this era should have?

NO! We can't have things like that because people like OP (and a lot of conservatives) have these imprinted beliefs from a lifetime of fear mongering, or trauma if they immigrated from some garbage country with poor institutions(ex. Cuban immigrants opposed to Universal healthcare or eastern european immigrants opposed to anything with the word [commun/social]ist)

I've volunteered in the past for Progressive candidates that have a #1 criteria for not taking any corporate money. It is so much of a time sacrifice to get an AOC or Bernie type candidate only to have that progress stymied by endless amount of money pouring in on the other side. Why are we even doing it when day after day people like OP crop up with this nonsense? Whats the point of constantly fighting to enlighten person after person who starts off their beliefs with these 1-dimensional arguments? Its makes me want to just watch it all burn down just as long as people with your mentality go down with the ship. I get why a lot of wealthier people are just leaving the country. The fix requires decades of effort and will just break many people that try to go down that path. If you are wealthy and you have this one and only life, is it really worth it to have to deal with people like OP? Or is it better to just leave and let them wallow in their ignorance. I guess it depends on how important the country is to you. Even that concept of loyalty to a country seems to be eroding in this era of passport wealth.