I believe that we are all in a privileged position just to be in this community as I would say that any Fractal equipment is a luxury, but I feel that the bubble has to burst on guitar pricing and that it should come back down to a more realistic honest level.
I can dream.
I fear that prices
coming down substantially probably
is a dream, at this point, for the same reasons I mentioned in that earlier post.
Sure, there are some $4,000 or $6,000 guitars that nobody wants badly enough to pay that kind of cash. That's just manufacturers pricing themselves out of the market.
But if we consider the $2,000 guitars that used to be $1,500? Or the $1,500 guitars that used to be $1,200?
I'm pretty sure
most of that comes from each dollar being less valuable, which means you have to use more dollars to obtain the same value of guitars, or groceries, or garden-tools, or...well,
anything.
If I'm right about that, the current guitar prices
are at a "realistic honest level"; or at least, they're no more dishonest or unrealistic than they ever were.
Barring
deflation (which we don't want, for a variety of reasons), any decrease in the value of your money is basically a "one-way ratchet effect": You're stuck with it, and must merely adjust to the "new normal" over time. Once your currency has been devalued, you've shot your wad, and your only option is to
wait until economic growth brings the "objective" value of the goods and services back up, until it's proportional to your steroidally-inflated money supply. And you can't use "monetary stimulus" to speed that process up, 'cause that's just more "hair of the dog": It prolongs the problem and pushes the solution further out-of-sight.
(Sorry, party-boy Keynes; but your pal Friedrich has you dead-to-rights on this one.)
What does it look like, when natural, non-stimulated economic growth brings your economy back into proportion with your money supply?
It doesn't look like prices coming
down. That never happens. You will never again see a fountain-drink cost a nickel, like it did in the 1950's (or whenever that was).
What it looks like, is income figures rising to be proportionate to the increased cost of everything.
So those $2,000 guitars won't drop back to $1,500; but,
maybe after some years go by, people who used to make $75K will be making $100K, and the guitars will be as
buyable as they used to be, relative to incomes.
(Y'know, if AI doesn't drive us
all out of our jobs. Man, I'm full of sweetness and light this morning.)