>To accept the premise is to believe that anything made of quality will never get bought/used which is manifestly not the case.

I disagree. It is a ratio of quality to price. People have different opinions about what the acceptable minimum ratio is, and it varies by product, and by time. For example, many people find Costco to hit the right ratio most of the time.

For example, I have been using LEDs and dimmable LEDs from soft white (~2700K) to cool white (~4000K) with no problem, all purchased at Home Depot/Lowes/Costco. Some have failed earlier than anticipated, but nowhere near enough to cancel out the cost savings.

The problem is evaluating quality before purchase. There's not a great way of expressing the sorts of factors that differentiate between good and bad LED bulbs that consumers can easily understand, let alone anything to encourage different manufacturers to use the same measurements. If the consumer can't tell what is quality, what's to get them to spend the money for it?