I would say that as "standards" are lowered the "acceptance" of lower standards becomes common place.
In the early to mid 60's a major U.S. airline tried a temp policy that if you had a commercial certificate with an instrument rating and two years of college they would guarantee you a flight p̣sition as soon as you graduated from the university. I don't remember how many they hired under that policy, although I do know it was a good number, but within 5 years their were less than a handfull remaining because they could not maintain company standards.
I did a fair amount of flying with new-hire 1,000 F/O's, and it was a text-book example of "flying alone".