Is it possible for a high end manufacturer to overprice their goods?

The fact that speakers are priced like that only adds to arguments against the value systems we have allowed to get set up. Someone is buying a $133k speaker while someone else is living in a cardboard box.

A quote from Pope Francis:

"Today consumerism determines what is important. Consuming relationships, consuming friendships, consuming religions, consuming, consuming... . Whatever the cost or consequences. A consumption which does not favor bonding, a consumption which has little to do with human relationships. Social bonds are a mere 'means' for the satisfaction of 'my needs.' The important thing is no longer our neighbor, with his or her familiar face, story and personality.

"The result is a culture which discards everything that is no longer 'useful' or 'satisfying' for the tastes of the consumer. We have turned our society into a huge multicultural showcase tied only to the tastes of certain 'consumers', while so many others only 'eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table'. This causes great harm. I would say that at the root of so many contemporary situations is a kind of impoverishment born of a widespread and radical sense of loneliness. ... Loneliness with fear of commitment in a limitless effort to feel recognized."

-- Address to bishops at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Philadelphia, Sept. 28, 2015

Someone is buying a $133k speaker while someone else is living in a cardboard box.

And some are eating fillet mignon and others are eating a hot dog. So what does that have to do with the topic?

@russ49 -- It has to do with one construal of the OP’s question, as to whether the speakers are overpriced. Clearly, one reaction to the price is moral revulsion; we

read this all the time on Audiogon -- "How dare they ask that much for X?" We all understand that there are no *laws* against pricing things as they wish, so there are a couple other ways to explain why this question gets asked.

(a) Is the price justified by the economic inputs (parts, labor, research, etc.)? Here the answer is hard to gauge, because every company adds in their "margin" and it’s hard to question what kind of margin is "correct."

(b) Is the price justified by the wider social conditions? Here the answer is often "no," either because of what people themselves can afford or what they see around them (hence the cardboard box comment). Many people get angry at this question because it brings up issues of injustice and how dare we talk about that. This is supposed to be a happy occasion!

(c) Is the price creating a distortion in the audio market? Here, people divide up. Some see the pricing as part of a trend which is distorting the hobby into an ultra rich guy thing. That makes regular hobbyists feel priced out. Others look to the opportunity to buy this ultra-gear at used prices or hope that there is trickle-down from the technology (the way the Apollo program lead to all kinds of innovation.)

In short, the OP’s question is a kind of Rorschach test, and this leads to a fun but chaotic, cross-purposes thread.

@russ69 Thanks for pushing me!

@8th-note 

If you have $50 million in Microsoft stock spending 7 figures for a stereo is reasonable in your world. What else are you going to do with your money? Give it to the homeless?

Well-placed irony. That said, one thing which is true about the wealthy, and non-wealthy to a large degree, is that happiness is largely measure in relative social position, not material riches. People buy eye candy and expensive things in large part to position themselves with others in their stratum. Part of the audio market is serving that need, while also throwing in a lot of nice audio parts and research in the process.

@waytoomuchstuff I like the way you laid out those factors  and how they need to be considered when people "shoot from the hip," here, about whether a product is "worth it."
 
 You write,

"But what about services we obtain that are purely intellectual with no parts costs? Should attorneys, consultants, etc. offer their work for free becuase their "parts costs" are free? It doesn’t take long to see how silly the parts cost vs selling price argument is."
 

For me, this statement raises the question, "How many services are critical for a piece of audio gear?" It's clear how complicated this gear can become -- internally, but also with the elaborate casework, etc.
 
Then I think back to the very simple and massive pleasure I got from listening to, for example, a Quicksilver amp connected with Fritz speakers. Here, the overhead is so minimal compared to many other products, so the bang for buck value here -- sound quality per dollar spent -- seems very very high. Do these sound as good as other products costing 5x the price? Maybe not, but then those products very likely include a bunch of costs that Fritz and QS do not. Whether that's worth it to the buyer is their decision, but they have to realize that they are spending more on people who have nothing to do with the sound quality.

@waytoomuchstuff 

A little about the luxury market: Centi-millionaires, traditionally, don’t loose sleep agonizing over whether or not they received strong price/performance when making a purchase.. They are primarily concerned with owning something that really IS something worth owning. Sure, they’ll brag about the "guts" or "workmanship", but their true motivators may be the intangibles that can’t be measured. What is the prestige in owning the best of the best actually worth? And, if it IS expensive, wouldn’t it be viewed as a badge of honor rather than a shockingly high-priced trophy?

Very well put. Their motivation by the "intangibles" specifically referenced here place them outside of audiophilia, in my opinion, as their concern is about their power (relative social status) and that is neither about "sound" nor "music." (Nor about their soul, if we channel Pope F.)

we could look at various price ranges to see if a significant and meaningful gap exists whereby a segment of the buying public is being ignored, or has been abandoned altogether. As a result of that 2x product introduction, is there still a healthy market for legitimate high-value products at 1/2 that price, and somewhere in between? IF that 2x product negatively impacted the viability and availability of those other (lower) price ranges, then some measurable damage has been done.

This is really insightful. Let me see if I got the gist: the intrusion of hyperbolic price increases ("game-changer" products and prices) creates a carve-out which damages an existing market segment. That segment has high quality (if a bit more expensive) stuff. They experience a new customer drought. Here, my mind goes to, say, an expensive Hegel H30 amp which at, say, $16k may be just a fantastic amp and an end-game solution for many customers in that aforementioned segment. But now, if enough people are now chasing, say, Gryphon amps, then Hegel has a problem because the carve out is starving them. I hope I am getting that right.

Once said, the comments made by Pope Francis and the criticism of materialistic values is a slippery slope. Consider a $133k or $3k pair of loudspeakers. If you get on his slope then you have to ask, "Why should we enjoy any stereo or hometheater system when there are poor people living in cardboard boxes?" We also would then have to ask, "Who’s to decide how much we are allowed to spend, if anything, on loudspeakers?"

Who's to decide? Are you suggesting that there should be no limits? 

@waytoomuchstuff 

Now take those numbers and project a straight line out to 100,000 times that investment ($400k) while removing the word "coffee". Is there some level of consistency in the motiviators?

I guess...yes? This is clearly in your wheel house, so I'm trying to follow out the logic. My guess is that whether the coffee/audio analogy can be extrapolated in this way would depend on empirical psychological factors which someone could study. It sounds like commonsense to me, but the devil would be in the details! ;-)

 I'd ask you what we should be allowed to spend on speakers, but maybe we should keep the moral and political discussions on Twitter, not an audio hobbiest website.

Sorry to let morality exceed it's appropriate boundaries. We must keep morality contained, or it might take hold.