The problem is it’s not really people’s choice. Companies have gotten very good at disguising quality traders and marketing has got very good at muddying the waters.
Since this is about tools, I’ll bring up Craftsman as an example. For many years, it was a quality brand accessible to homeowners. But as they changed to be cheaper they still marketed themselves as a quality brand and they seemed like the same price. It was only after the brand value was destroyed, that it became clear how “cheap” the tools had become and people were able to make a legitimate decision to move on
123@programming.dev 20 hours ago
That was also the conclusion of this video on the Speed channel for older version of things vs new one (included tools, shoes/undershirts, etc - I would ignore consumables that expire but they were there for s&g it seems):
youtu.be/I4C62HC1HSo