It's not simple. I'll offer up a bit of a defense of Lee dies. Lee does manufacture and finish in a manner intended to hold costs down. This is because Richard Lee's philosophy was that many people reload to save money, and if reloading equipment cost makes the payback time long, fewer people will try it. What everyone agrees with is that Lee has come up with a number of technical innovations over the years that nobody else has. What's ironic is that some of those innovations are the very things that get criticized. They don't suit everybody.
Take Nathan's objections, for example, as they are common complaints about Lee. The one-piece decapping rod design is to address the fact standard replaceable pin designs often have their pin chucks get loose, so the pin shifts out of alignment with the centerline and touches down to the side of the flash hole and then breaks as the case comes up into the die. A fixed pin won't get out of alignment, so Lee decided to make that pin strong and fixed in the decapping stem rod. But then, suppose you get a case with an obstructed flash hole or a flash hole that is way off-center. Then the pin hits the obstruction or brass instead of the hole anyway. Then how do you protect it from breaking? Lee's answer was to hold the rod with a collet that lets the rod slip up in the die before breaking the pin.
The almost chewy-soft aluminum adjustment plugs are designed to break away before excessive upward press pressure can damage the rest of the die. The seater stems in Lee's dead-length seating dies are intended to float against the bottom of that plug to self-align with the bullet to reduce finished round concentricity, a variation of which is also used in the Redding Competition Seating Die, where it works quite well.
MarkVII echoes a common complaint about another Lee innovation: the rubber O-ring lock rings. As provided, they do have the drawback that they have to be reset whenever you change out the die. But the idea comes from practices recommended by match shooters in the '80s and '90s and sometimes more recently. John Feamster, for example, said he sandwiched a rubber O-ring between the press and the lock rings on his RCBS dies so they had a little angular float to allow them to self-align with the brass, which he said improved accuracy by improving cartridge concentricity. As long as you don't tighten the Lee ring into hard contact with the die, it provides that function.
Does everyone like those innovations? Clearly not, or you wouldn't hear the criticisms of them. They do sometimes require some extra attention. The decapping rod collets often need to be tightened with a pair of wrenches before they stop slipping too easily. You can also put a registration mark on the rod where it emerges from the collet on top so you can see if it slips up and tap it back down with a plastic or brass hammer if it does.
The soft aluminum plug threads can sometimes loosen. Just put the plug's threads between the jaws of your vice and squash the tops of the threads just slightly flat in one place and try it in the die again. Repeat until you have upset the threads enough to stay put.
The Lee seating stems need lubrication between the top end of them and the bottom of the aluminum plug to slide and self-align well. It's a good application for dry lube, so your die doesn't get gummy.
The bullet tip recess in Lee seating stems often are bored a bit too shallow for higher BC bullets, and those bullets can reach the bottom of the recess with their tips instead contact being made somewhere on the ogive of the bullet. With the often uneven hollow point match bullet tips, this can cause inconsistent seating depth. But Lee can provide a VLD-shaped one, or you can drill out the bottom of the taper in the one you have to prevent contact with the very tip of the bullet.
Despite their crude and easy-to-rust outside finish, the bore of a Lee steel rifle sizing die remains the only one on the market (I believe) that is honed to its final size, making their cross-sections essentially perfectly round. With other brands, you occasionally find a slightly oval cross-section.