I don't believe that high standards inhere in small scale. I have also not read or heard anyone articulate a reasonable explanation for why that is necessarily the case. Figuring out how to operate a business with high standards at scale is arguably the primary job of anyone who operates any business at scale.
It's easy to create a process that hits 99.99% yield when the absolute value of complex goods being produced is 10 items.
Can you maintain 99.99% yield when producing 100,000,000 of those items? Almost certainly not. Does hitting 80% yield mean you have lowered your standards when every other manufacturer of similar scale can only hit 60%? No it doesn't. It means you have maintained high standards, it's just the context around you has changed and so the measurement of high standards has changed along with it (as it should).
I couldn't disagree more. Standards are not relative. What you're describing in your example is an instance of lowering a standard. The standard does not change because one's tolerance for meeting it is lowered. You're simply accepting that you've failed to meet the standard. You can say whatever you like to excuse it, but it's an excuse nonetheless.
