Well it should be and a lot is in reality but there is increasingly expensive stuff being hawked.
Where it is really good performance for little money is the headphone and sitting at a computer with near field monitors area, which are the least difficult but equally massively improved in performance and reduced in price.
A good thing but as one should expect I think.
Expensive stuff is being hawked because a good chunk the affluent, older 2 channels buyers are those who grew up in a pre-computer era when having a big ass 2 channel stereo was cool and was a common male hobby.
Then there is the intermediate period where the buyers are those who grew up in the heyday of home theater / surround sound. The gear might not be as individually expensive as some 2 channel gear, but there is a lot of stuff to buy -- multi speakers, subs, etc.
The good price / performance area, that you note, is in the personal space -- headphones, desktop DACs, and other "small scale" audio that younger buyers prefer.
I think the expense that you're perceiving is at the low volume end of the market, at which point one loses economies of scale.
I'll be curious to see what happens to the 2 channel high end industry when most of their current customers are deceased some decades from now.
