>People have the option of just not buying stuff.

Unless you know, your main and only PC/notebook just died and need a replacement ASAP, they you don't really have an option to not buy. And no, the used market (where I live) is just as fucked, proportionally reflecting the retail gouging, with people wanting quite a lot of cash for tower PCs and notebooks from the Pentium 4 - Core 2 Duo era.

> Prices will crash.

Does your crystal ball also say when exactly? If my laptop broke, then I need a replacement now in the overpriced market, not in X years when prices will crash.

If there were such a crystal ball, the same market doing the gouging would be pricing it in already ;) does suck that "wait and see" is the optimal answer to the average consumer but I guess that's the capitalist hellscape we have wrought