I really think it's the education issue. To be able to buy confidently in the mid-range without regulatory protections ensuring that things cannot be under mid-

I really think it's the education issue. To be able to buy confidently in the mid-range without regulatory protections ensuring that things cannot be under mid-range (talking quality-wise) you have to know a lot. To do that for a substantial fraction of what you buy you have to practically be an expert at buying, with lots of knowledge and adept at spotting scammers. Ain't no-one got time for that (unless that actually is their job). The quality bathtub graph falls out of that. Not enough confident mid-range buyers to pay 10x the crap price, so you never get to a scale where you can (and/or are forced to by competition) drop to 4-5x the crap price (multipliers pulled from thin air, obviously, and are just representative of some real values). [EDIT] in fact, to take your example, you may need to know at least a little about jeans to be sure the $60 jeans will last at least 3x as long as the $20 ones, and with more knowledge and time shopping you might be able to find a $40 pair that'd last even longer than the $60 ones. The fact that the $60 pair might still be crap is the real problem.