What's extra annoying is that companies are burning brands on this, and as they're transitioning from selling quality goods to peddling cheap crap, they of course don't tell you about it. Instead, you see metal being swapped for plastics, screws for glue, assembly being worse and worse - while their marketing departments double down on highlighting how pretty, modern, quality and smart this years' model is.
I've actually started building my own furniture from raw wood etc. just because it's impossible to find anything that costs less than $1000 that isn't just cardboard and MDF with a veneer. At least with furniture there's a market for "solid wood". But in so many other industries you get to pick between $3 garbage in a $0.20 box for $5, and $3 garbage in a $5 box for $20.
> Today, it's self-evident to us as consumers when a product is cheap, low-quality, manufactured garbage from China.
Correct.
> In many cases we can choose to spend more and buy a handmade or custom version of the product we want.
Not quite. It's increasingly hard to find a version of a product that's not low-quality garbage - the expensive option is often just the cheap option with extra markup for those who got fooled by marketing, or naively believe companies still care about their brands.
That's the unexpected side effect that, I feel, people still mostly failed to realize: because running a company and manufacturing anything has nontrivial costs, letting the market race to the bottom hollows out the middle. You're left with a bunch of specialty vendors who make quality goods for other businesses or governments, at ridiculous prices, and the low-quality throwaway garbage for everyone else. The "more expensive, reasonable quality" product group disappears - the vendors move either into low-quality crap or too-expensive-for-individuals specialty items (or sometimes both), as the middle can't compete with either end.
I imagine the threat of AI-generated content to be similar: as it completely blows the bottom across creative industry, it will hollow it out. Skilled creators will, when they can, move to the high-end Big Art, where you pay more for the work's provenance than for the enjoyment itself, because they won't be able to afford competing with somewhat worse but much cheaper AI-generated shovel-art.
(Also relevant is that regular people are usually as good at distinguishing between crap and good products as they're at distinguishing between crap and good art.)