Are you Guys Rich or What!?

I guess I do question individuals that are always changing out expensive gear in a never ending quest for owning "the best" which ties into the wretched excess comment. This has nothing to do with music reproduction as much as buying the latest most expensive toy which will certainly be replaced in short order. To each their own.

I have an agreement with my wife that my music hobby can cost as much as we spend on a car. Given she has a passion for Alfas, that gives me a reasonable budget, but I am always suggesting she upgrades from time to time. If you are serious about this hobby I cannot see why you would spend more on a car than on your music, and try adding up the cost of owning a car sometime. I agree with you Tubegroover, throwing money at the best is just silly. As my brother once said "any idiot can put together a good system for $100,000, the real fun is putting something together for $10,000, or even a lot less, that approaches the best." I tend to focus a lot of my activity (outside of listening to music) on learning how to wring the most out of a given system.

Cornfedboy is Right, Although i have not spent 100k on my system..somewhere around 30-35k. The point is I work my ass off to support my family and run my company and if the Left keeps taxing and regulating my butt off im going to start wacking them in the head with my heavy,imorale mono-block amps. If you need to find me ill be staying with cornfeedboy cause it sounds like his system sounds better than mine. Lee

Cogito - I wasn't trying to imply that your comments and ideas on controlling the price of high-end equipment was impractical. Actually, I was trying to point out that you have other people in the world who think along exactly the same lines, and I think your points have a great deal of merit. One of the points that the author of "Luxury Fever" makes is that the paradox we face is that it's a series of individual decisions that have consequences for the group as a whole. Nobody feels as though their making a different decision will affect the overall picture but, in fact, to actually change the overall picture a whole group has to make different decisions. The author's answer was to heavily tax things like $75K speakers as a way of getting large numbers of people who might purchase such a thing to not do so, while allowing those who REALLY want such a thing to still be able to obtain them. If this happened, the effect you suggest would quite likely occur - the high-end models would almost undoubtedly come down in price (and quite possibly performance / aesthetics), and the ultra high-end would undoubtedly go up in price, both because of the heavy tax and the need for the manufacturer to make their money on far fewer sales.

Cornfedboy, thanks for sending out a reality check here. I don't know about the Republican party aspect, but you made some good points IMO. Imagine for a second that you are a gifted designer/engineer/inventor. You have an idea that could potentially enhance lets say... multi channel playback, it takes $100,000 to fund your research and developement for 3 years. You are now able to produce the worlds next, "best" playback device. With investors you manufacture 3000 of these devices, costing $500 each to produce, totaling 1.5 million in hardware alone, not to mention paying 5 employees. You spend $30,000. to advertise, all the while praying your idea is accepted. Your total cost to produce and market this product is $4000 each. You have mortgaged your house and borrowed from friends to retain a controlling interest over this because you want to maintain design integrity and insure that you keep a fair share of the profit, should there be one. At your A/V dealer this product is displayed and demonstrated for the public, (costing the dealer some time and money). People check it out and find that they absolutely love the sound, and it would be a major improvement in your sound system, but it cost say... $14,000. That may seem "high' to some people, but you only get $6,500 at your wholesale price, giving you a $2,500 profit. You sell 1500 of them totaling $3,750,000. Minus your 2,000,000 investment gross profit is 1.5 mil. Split among investors you made $150,000. This enables you to afford to refine your copyrighted design and sell that to a major audio manufacturer for 2 mil. The public gets an even better playback device at a fraction of the original cost, say... $1,400. Change the numbers however you want, is the designer/inventor wrong for trying to build a better "mousetrap", and profiting from it? lets see, at first we had a $14,000 "over priced, self indulgent, conspicuously consumed" device, now the general public can get close to audio nirvana at 10% of the cost. Five years later, the same technology is available for $359 at Circuit city, and all the "less fortunate" people can now have some guiltless higher end fun. Why all the guilt tripping?. I have carefully spent around $15,000 over a 3 year period to come as close as I can to a $60,000 system. Would I have prefered to start out at that level?... Damn right I would. I would have been enjoying my system that much sooner, spending less time researching and negotiating, and more time listening to music.