I agree that it is nice to have the option when you don't need the quality. It is also nice to have the option when you are trying something new and don't know if you want to invest in quality. Yet the article goes further than that. They are suggesting that companies are capturing a significant fraction of the market, so there is less pressure to produce quality goods. Whether this is resulting in lower quality goods overall, people are debating over. On the other hand, it does seem to be making it difficult to determine what goods are higher quality.