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Originally Posted by Leyor
But classifying success as publishers earning alot of money, and pricing books high as being something having an inherent value by itself, is something that is diametrally in opposition to the interests of all us regular people who either benefit from obtaining the books, or those who originally author them. It makes me wonder if some of us here suffer from a bit of Stockholm syndrome,
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There's a lot of Stockholm syndrome in the publishing industry.
It's also true that the changes in publishing--switching to ebooks and POD, slow death of brick-and-mortar stores, cuts in school & library budgets--are going to mean some currently-successful authors are going to lose their incomes. Some of those will be good authors that we'd like to succeed; their works just won't thrive in the new system. And some authors & publishers focus on those, instead of acknowledging the hundreds of new authors that will spring up to replace each of them.
There's much wailing about "but who are the new Shakespeares? The new Austens, the new Dickenses, or even the new Rowlings and Kings, in this endless digital slushpile?"
Well, yeah, probably not going to have authors as popular as Dickens... because when you're competing with 2000 other books released that year, it's a lot easier to be the star than when you're competing with 50,000 new books. Or 200,000.
In the 60's, TV shows were canceled for ratings numbers that the networks would scream and beg for today... because when there were less than 10 channels, everyone watched whatever was most popular. With over 500, people watch what they like. More viewers, more shows, but less viewers per show.
The future is more books, and less blockbusters. And the tighter copyright law enforcement is, the less shared culture we'll have.
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To finish off. History has proven that:
There's no virtue to high priced books.
Besides making publishers ride gilt carriages 
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Absolutely. There's great virtue in finding ways for authors to make a good living at their craft; there is absolutely no reason for that to be "fewer, more expensive sales of books" rather than many more lower-priced sales. In fact, it's better for authors if they have more readers... the authors I know would all be happier with 1000 readers at $1 (final amount to the author) than with 200 readers at $5.
They might not trust that they can get 1000 readers if they drop the price to $1, but that's a different issue from "this book is worth $5." Or $10. Or $34.95.