i agree on the ham.
i see the audio a bit differently.
the diamond business is a monopoly run by debeers. they make a lot of money. high end audio is the opposite. there are many, many players and only a few make a really good living. i have always advocated that the best thing that could happen for both producers and consumers of audio is if 80% of the producers went out of business. i don't by any means want to keep out small, new innovative companies. i just want the companies big or small, old or new, that sell inferior goods at their pricepoint to exit the market.
the high prices of highend audio is due largely to their low volumes. very few of those high priced units are being sold. and yes, those few companies that do sell a decent amount (still incredibly low by any manufacturing standard) are the lucky beneficiaries of that high price umbrella set by the 80% that are barely surviving.
If 80% of the companies were driven out, the good producers would see their sales rise 5x -- with that they would have more money for r&d and the ability to source their material at lower costs.
consumers would also benefit. it is easier to decide what to buy with fewer and better options to audition. i also believe that prices would come down because consumers could bargain with more knowledge and some of the savings from economies of scale would trickle to consumers.
one more point about too much choice needs to be said again and somewhat differently. even if you are willing to spend up for the high end stuff, its very hard to know what to buy if you are looking to buy one piece in the audio chain. the sound you get is the interaction of the whole system. and even a whole system will sound differently in your room than the store. so in home demos are the way to go. but that's not easily accomplished with bulky gear costing in the 5 and 6 figures, not to mention doing it 5-10 times.
i'll say it again. central to this process is a critical, informed press. only they have the ability to sample many products without buying them and the voice to get the word out. even then you would also have to figure out which reviewers to trust and have your taste. honestly, its kind of hopeless.
BUT in the end prices would not come down that much. audio seems, and is in many ways, grossly overpriced because we see it as a manufactured good, and audio companies are constantly hyping their technology. in our lifetimes we have seen the price of manufactured goods and technology decline tremendously in real and even absolute terms.
but high end audio is not priced like a mass market manufactured good and never will be. high end audio has more in common with the furniture business than technology. you can buy a chair for $5-50 bucks at the mall. or you can go to roche-bobois and spend $500-5000.
(indeed, in audio the "box" often costs more than the electronics inside of it).
all of which is to say, that the pricing in high end audio is not that irrational. its the nature of any small batch luxury goods market plus an audio industry that is in a sad way with many, many small players with a crappy cost structure going after a small, declining and dying market.
the last thing i will say, for now, is that the really expensive stuff gets a disproportionate amount of press and attention from us relative to sales. so we are worked up into a state of frenzy beyond what the problem really merits.
if the truth was told more often and more loudly about how some of the mid-priced gear (still expensive but not insane) gets you 98% of what you want, then we could more calmly see the uber gear with dispassion as largely irrelevant museum pieces.