Quality generally with many manufactured goods. There are health and safety regulations but if there were a requirement for a 20-year warranty (which is about what my Aeron chair has) both quality and prices would probably increase significantly.
In the opposite direction, you're not actually allowed to generally buy a car without modern safety features. (Although automakers do make cars that are have higher or lower safety ratings within the regulatory framework.)
A common thread is that when push comes to shove, a lot of consumers will choose the lower price.
The straight-to-landfill consumer goods make me sad, but I guess I can buy cheaper tires and only drive in ideal conditions so there can be a place for middling quality.
Or tools for the occasional household use. You might not want junk but that table saw you use maybe a handful of times a year may not have to be as high-end as what a carpenter might use most days.
Which would be fine if you could tell if you could actually reliably find high quality products. But I'm increasingly finding it difficult to distinguish between paying more for quality and paying more for overpriced junk.
The 'Project Farm' reviews on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectFarm) really have been eye-opening for me in that regard; sometimes there is still a strong correlation between price and quality but half the time the best quality (not just price to quality ratio -- subjective or otherwise) ends up clustering in decidedly interesting places.
In the opposite direction, you're not actually allowed to generally buy a car without modern safety features. (Although automakers do make cars that are have higher or lower safety ratings within the regulatory framework.)
A common thread is that when push comes to shove, a lot of consumers will choose the lower price.