@mulveling it is a prevalent pattern to see folks rolling rare vintage tubes into cheap chi-fi or even cheap Schiit amps, especially headphone gear. Especially 6SN7 and 6922. It always rubbed me the wrong way too. What a waste.
Quite so. In economics an analogy has long been called "tragedy of the commons". A slightly edited quote from Wiki -
a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use,[act independently according to their own self interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action.
The value of the tubes to the community is much higher than the prices they are being traded at privately.