JD, excellent post.
It's amazing how people don't factor in actual business costs (rent, etc.), ROI, marketing, salaries for employees, margins for dealers and distributors, etc., not to mention sales volume which has got to pretty insubstantial given the niche market. It's usually a business necessity to rake purchasers of halo products to recoup costs and continue development (as we have seen, technology progresses, those products that do not improve are eventually superseded). At the end of the day, those that afford halo products (don't feel too bad for them, they have the cash) make the technology available to all the rest of us down the line.
Frankly, if it were so cheap to build and market cables why aren't we seeing companies make a superior product to the ultra-expensive cables and then market it at 75% of the cost of the current ultra-expensive crop of cables. That way, it would still be expensive (if you believe that's why people buy certain cables) and protect the company's profit margin but the product would kill the competitors on price with superior performance and the company would clean up.