Ayn Marx wrote:
George M. Middius wrote:

snip


PS: On one point I think we'd agree. To achieve decent outcomes in
something like analogue engineering processes, such as the design and
manufacture of say, a turntable/arm/cartridge that's state of the art,
large amounts of money must be spent.

The engineering per se is not expensive. It has long, long since been
reduced to practice, documented, discussed. There is nothing
proprietary or radical about it. The best example is the Linn Sondek,
essentially a uprated, better made version of the JFK/MM era AR
turntable. Any patents ran out decades ago.

The price is high because the market is inversely-price-sensitive, the
units are built in small quantities, and because there is a fair bit of
skilled hand labor involved at Western salaries (though I'd venture to
say that if there's a Ferrari in Linn's parking lot it does not belong
to any of the assemblers or technicians.)

Given a positively-price-sensitive market condition, substantially
higher quantities of product (leading to increased automation, design
to use more precise techniques on automated bases, etc.) and the use of
less expensive assembly labor-although that's a nominal part of the
whole package-it is absolutely and conclusively certain that the exact
quality of a current Linn table-arm-cartridge combination could be
reduced, probably drastically. However, arguably, a small specialist
firm like Linn could _then_ build a product yet better than the one
they currently do for more money than the mass produced version.

There will always be "more", a "higher end". However there have to be
objective standards or the "higher end" will be "higher" only in the
minds of the buyer, who will be a laughingstock in the eyes of others.