WHY IS THERE SO MUCH HATE FOR THE HIGH END GEAR ON AUDIO GEAR?

“When it comes to price people can charge what they want for what they create. If you don’t want it. Don’t pay for it.”

Dead wrong. Economic systems are not something handed down from God: they are social constructs. If you don’t like $1.2M audio systems, instead of not buying it, change the system that caters to millionaires. You are just being an apologist for laissez faire capitalism nothing more.

That said:

I’ve been at this hobby for 55 years. There was a guy named Hafler who built Dynaco into a little juggernaut of high quality - affordable!!! - gear for the lumpen proletariat types like myself. Hundreds of thousands sold. Rebuilt Dyna units are still the best bang for the buck out there today. 
 

Prices today are a reflection of the (passive, like you maybe?) acceptance of the grossly unequal economic structure we have in the U.S. today. It doesn’t have to be that way. 
 

This is the main reason why I don’t bother with new gear, I just keep the stuff I have refurbished and in top running order. I’m here in audiogon mostly out of curiosity or FOMO. But I will put my 38-67 year old gear up against anything on the market today and while it may not be the best according to some, it will righteously acquit itself. 

@cleeds
“why do you remain a passive victim to a system you dislike?”

Did you read what I wrote? No, you would rather overwrite it with your ideological assumptions, which willfully obscure one of my points. There’s nothing passive about me or what I accomplished at all. I have built - that’s an active verb - a world class audio system over 55 years and that cost me over that time about $35,000 in today’s dollars: that’s $636 a year, very efficient spending in the face of a culture that measures a man’s testosterone levels by the size of his budget (I had a better way of saying that but I think there are a few ladies present in the room).

“There are other countries that operate under different systems….”

This is such boring right wing drivel. It’s 75 year old McCarthyite crap. Can’t you be at least original?

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the period, by Paul Robeson, one of the two greatest bass baritones of the 20th Century, whom the U.S. government harassed into his grave for nearly two decades:

Mr. SCHERER: Why do you not stay in Russia?

Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?

from

History Matters: https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6440

“…You're being silly because it's essentially impossible for any of us to change our economic system.”

Totally wrong. Systems are changed all the time, either at the ballot box, through grassroots organizing with thousands of others, through catastrophe, like the Great Depression, or through revolution,…you know, like that Thing that we celebrate every July 4. 

@mahgister

organize. The easy stuff is shareholder resolutions, strikes, boycotts. The hard part is revolution, which won’t happen for the foreseeable future because the working classes in the U.S. seem more inclined towards fascism at the moment and the Democratic Party are not getting them back anytime soon because it thinks there is no problem that can’t be solved by throwing money at it. I see that what is more likely is another Jan 6 insurrection that succeeds.

This is supposed to be an audio forum 😬 so hey I’m chillin 😎 after this 😆!

@cleeds

Of the 3,000 books in my library, I have several shelves devoted to history books that unequivocally dispute your assertions about the frequency of change.

As for your other comment about 1/6, you clearly did not cognitively grasp what I said.

As for dreaming, I fought a case to the U.S. Supreme Court and got Scalia to write an 8-1 opinion in my favor. I’m likely the only dialectical materialist to get Scalia to agree with him…twice! Can’t do that without first, dreaming, second, designing, third planning, fourth executing like hell.

I changed constitutional law by getting The Supremes to overthrow 12 cases that came before me that went the other way

OK, outa here before the moderator pulls down what is otherwise a normal thread.