Every headphone screw that is made, every headphone launched, every song played signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This audiophile manufacturer is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern abyss headphone is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a cable upgrade with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single replacement driver with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Seriously though I think why products like these are so offensive to many is that many people take great effort in their craft, trying to make a living by delivering performance or excellence or beauty. It is extremely bothersome to see people who attain any standard of living by selling poorly engineered products by saying that they do things which they cannot do, and which the creators lack the expertise to deliver.
If you're in the business of trying to make something really good, the only thing more annoying that seeing someone make a living selling crap is seeing the people who buy it.