Hm... race to the bottom? We bought our current apartment (built in the 1980s) 12 years ago, and I have switched to LED lighting everywhere from the beginning. Main learning: old relays and/or dimmers seem to generate voltage spikes that are fine for old lightbulbs, but kill LED lamps in a matter of months, so that it looks like the lamps themselves might be the cause. After I replaced those, no more problems - most of the LED lamps from the beginning (except for those connected to old relays and dimmers) are still with us! I also tend towards brand name LED lights (Philips & co), which might be a bit more expensive, but have (I hope) better quality checks.

The following anecdote doesn’t contradict what you wrote but maybe you’ll find it interesting- I worked for a daughter company of Phillips in the 00s (as an embedded programmer). I was working on mp3 players and set-top boxes but my boss has been with Phillips for decades at the time. He told me how the CD players (the ones you’d connect to speakers at home, not the portable ones) had a variety of brands, from budget to premium. But the only differences were in the external materials & the quality of the disc tray - as those are differences people notice. But everything else (and thus the audio quality) was identical.