I think that the trick is to try to find new and upcoming brands that have a reputation for quality, and learn what high quality looks like so that you can confirm personally that the product is good.
This is difficult and requires ongoing work. Fashionable young people tend to do it but I certainly don’t blame anyone who decides that it isn’t worth the effort.
This is only a problem with really big and popular brands, where they leverage their brand at scale to generate more revenue.
You can find smaller brands that have been doing high quality stuff for a while, and they're unlikely to blow up in popularity or to reduce quality.
Docs are not my style so I don't know a good small brand that does boots like that, but I like Buttero, Crown Northhampton and John Elliott for boots/shoes. Beckett Simonon is a good brand for more formal shoes. Morjas is another brand for more formal shoes that looks really good, though I haven't bought anything from them yet.
I prefer the Costco solution 90% of the time. If and when the Costco solution does not work, then I do the research to figure out what might be better.
For example, I like to wear $30 Costco shoes. I can usually get at least a year out of them, but even if not, they’re only $30. I can buy 3 in a year and come out ahead. And I don’t waste time researching shoes.
This used to be what brand was all about - that you could trust the brand to produce high-quality stuff because it was a quality brand. All Doc Marten boots were well-made and solid, would last a decade at least, because it was a quality brand and the price tag came with that.
I know what high quality looks like; I wore my first Doc Martens for a decade. I trusted the brand when revisiting my youth and buying a new pair.
It seems someone figured out that the price tag goes with the brand, not the quality. So you can charge high prices for cheap boots if you put the DM tag on them. And make bank.
I think this will accelerate, and the "new and upcoming" brands will get shit at exactly the point where people like me discover them. Because, as you say, it's not worth the effort to keep up with this rapid churn.
Hence the Inverse Vimes solution: stop trying to buy quality and instead accept that everything is shit and deal with that reality; buy cheap and often.