[firstplacelast]

That's like saying smoke detectors should cost thousands of dollars bc they can save a 500K+ building. That's a poor way to look at value in these situations. It's cheap and easy to make, so it should be cheap to the consumer if there weren't all sorts of red-tape and opaque pricing schemes used as an excuse to prop of extortion.

[tptacek]

Why is that a poor way of looking at the situation? The reason smoke detectors don't cost thousands of dollars is that there are lots of different smoke detectors competing the price down.