A friend of mine has a food fetish and has channeled some of that passion for food into his food blog. Recently, I’ve had a little debate with him about one of his assertions. The specific post can be found here. If you read the comments, I’m “relativistboy”.

It has me thinking more globally about quality in America, though. It’s not just food where the standards of acceptability are unacceptably low.  It’s practically everywhere from home furnishings, automobiles, consumer electronics, et al.  And I’m not going to even get started on civil services, public officials, public works, etc.
Why is the bar set so low? Why does the average American buy a poofy sofa velour from Levitz while supposedly the typical Dane buys sectionals from places like this?  Is it purely cost?  Or is it convenience?