On another hand, I'm observing that most goods purchased and sold are of lesser quality compared to 15-20 years ago. Even on comparable price tags.

It's become easier to make "good enough" products that are of subpar quality. Just an example that's relevant for me recently: faucet heads. My local supermarket sells one that is identical—but 3 times the price—of one sold on AliExpress. The faucet head breaks after a few months.

If I start looking for them, I could make a whole post on goods and services like that.

So, while I agree that you must be excellent to stand out among your peers, that is certainly not what companies are recruiting or fostering. I didn't want to talk about LLMs, but one can easily imagine how that will impact product quality.

It's getting easier to be "good enough". Or at least fake it.