Why are speaker stands so expensive?!

I used to put my Quad ESLs (aka "57"s) on cinder blocks. Perfect height and you can paint them any color you like. If you have a hammer drill and masonry bit you can fit them with spikes too. 

After that, I bought some solid 1" x 1" square steel and had it welded into some custom stands by a local welder working out of his garage. The problem is that paying for steel and cutting, welders, paint,... it all adds up and it was just a little more expensive to buy the audiophile stands. 

Another option is to buy 8" concrete form tubes at your local Home Depot, cut them to the height you want, tape off the bottom really well with plastic, fill them with quickcrete and set your steel spikes sticking out of the top (which will be the bottom). This would be a more acoustically diffusive shape and would not create much diffraction from the speakers. You can wrap them in fabric or carpet, paint them, or whatever you like.  

If you can get your stands used I think that's the best value out there. 

Because someone will pay it.

At the risk of opening myself up to ridicule I bought Rockville stands for my many pairs of bookshelf speakers. They were dirt cheap and doing admirable job after a few cheap modifications. I filled the posts to the top with rice and applied a layer of dynamat to the platforms. Even my bottom ported Sonus Faber sound excellent on them and they are aesthetically decent as well

For metal stands, Monoprice quad-post stands were highly recommended.  The only complaint I had is the small top plates.  For wood stands, Rockville stands have a good value proposition. Two-tone wood stands (RHT or SS series) are in imparticular simplistic and appealing in looks imo. It comes with two sizes of top plates (7"x9.25" & 9.25"x11.8") )for accommodating different sizes of bookshelfs that I found handy.  However, if you choose wood stands, two extra treatments are highly recommended. First, fill sands in the post up to 75-85% high (to enhance its SQ but keep the center gravity reasonably low). Second, place proper "decoupler" between the bookshelfs and top plates to reduce possible resonance to the minimum. For that, I found drum dampener gel/pad are one of the best decouplers . It will help keep the speakers stablized on the stands too.

I purchased a pair of Lovan steel speaker stands that were approx 28" high from audio Advisor that looked and were just as well built as Sound Anchor stands. 

Granted this was about 12 years ago and prices have definitely gone up, but I got these stands for $50 new. They were originally $80, but were on sale at the time.

I've noticed many speaker companies that make stand mount loudspeakers at exorbitant prices sell the matching stands for equally exorbitant prices. And naturally, they say their expensive stands are required for optimum performance. I haven't examined a whole lot of these expensive stands, but my opinion is they aren't worth their price tags.

My 2 cents worth.