> as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup

This is so true and insightful. Even plenty of so-called “luxury goods” are trash. And outside of luxury, it seems like most markets are dominated by roughly 90-99.9% products that are all identically garbage, just ranging from 1%, 2% up to 800% profit margins. So the person buying the high-end brand and the one buying from Aliexpress both have the same quality components (trash tier) and sometimes the same PCBs and designs. If you want a good quality refrigerator, you can buy a Viking or something for $9,000, or spend any amount of your choice from $800-5000 for something that will die in 2 years and be outside of warranty. It makes my blood boil, especially in areas like appliances, where the amount of waste, by tonnage, is super offensive.

it's also not like the Viking refrigerator will last appreciably longer than a cheaper make... their warranties can be noticeably shorter than their competitors even though they somehow charge 2x-10x the price.

> Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein.

This is just fashion, right? As something becomes commoditised, it starts to become subject to fashion, which means cheap and looks fashionable is more important than durability. So you can buy one every year and keep up, and throw away the old one.