Thanks for the thoughtful and passionate responses. Apologies to Bruno! Didn't mean to upset anyone's sensibilities.
Items are worth what people are willing to pay - obviously - but it's actually more complicated then that. An iphone was $700 a few years ago, and now they are $200. Are they now worth less $? No, not really. It's just that Apple Executives knew there was a group of people willing to pay triple the price in order to be the first movers and they wanted to extract these extra profits before rolling out a cheaper price for the masses. Is a grade A lute worth $5,000 or $500? For many people there worth $10,000 and for many others they are worth about $100, or even zero. Some might think there is only one point where supply equals demand and that is the cost the market produces. (In this case $3,000 to $5,000) But actually those price points are just averages. There are plenty of people willing to pay more and many others less for the same product. Airlines take advantage of this by selling the same tickets to many different people at vastly different prices through many channels. Likewise I suspect there is another price point where the supply and demand for a quality masss produced lute meets at around $500 and sooner or later someone is going to create the right product for that market. Here is a very relevant example: Japanese Shakuhachi (bamboo flutes) cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. And everyone bemoaned the lack of options for the working man. And eventually someone developed a mass produced plastic version for $75 which has sold tens of thousands. Of course top level performers and purists think the plastic version is a crime against all art, but plenty of people are now happily playing shakuhachi music on their plastic cheapo copies that sound pretty good all things considered. (And who would not be playing at all without this option.) So, no offense intended, but I do think it is possible to mass produce a passable lute. It's just a matter of there being a large enough market to justify the initial start up cost. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
