Hey Matt,
Thanks for taking my post in the non-malicious spirit intended and responding in kind.
I actually *have* spent four digits on a bike...the first digit was a '1', but adding in the hand-built touring wheels with Schmidt Dynohub, racks, Arkel panniers, $65 Schwalbes, and a million other components, it's probably pretty close to $3k worth of kit that I ride around on. So while I do think that spending four digits on a bike is silliness, it's silliness that I have done, and silliness that I would happily do again.
BUT, if I came to the MMM forums and asked "should I be silly like this?", I would be posting with the expectations that a bunch of Mustachians thinking more clearly than me would punch me in the face, remind me about hedonic adaptation, and suggest more-efficient alternatives. I'd already have the Bicycle Marketing Machine and my own hedonic desires sitting on my left shoulder with a pitchfork saying "yes, you'll love it, don't even bother asking anyone else!", while I would want the MMM community to sit on my right shoulder with their white mustaches and coolly and logically counter that guy on my left. Not say, "hmm, you know, that red dude on the other side of your head has a pretty good point!" I'm probably reading too much into such posts, but I figure if someone comes here and asks a question like that, it's a cry for help and they want to have someone talk them back from the edge. That's why I wouldn't even ask such a question. :-) And if I did, I'd say "fuck you, you're all wrong anyway, trying to ruin my fun, I'm getting the $3k bike anyway!"
To that end, I thought that your post on getting a $3k bike for $1500 was excellent. And yes, I forgot that saying "yeah, $3k is not that bad" is a lot different than the "pfft, $3k? Are you going to get it from Wal-Mart?" that he would get from a MTB forum. :-)
And yes, excellent point about those bike-porn photos being more about the experience than the object.
I made the comparison to a car not because they're at all filling the same function, but just in terms of raw price. Even if the buyer is getting $10k worth of value from a $3k bike, $3k still sounds like a stupid amount of money when you look at what makes up the bike and what makes up the car. A car also has fancy highly-researched suspension systems, in addition to a bunch of computers, and safety devices, and air-conditioning, and a million other things, and on the whole is FAR more complex than a bike and has a lot more raw materials. Just seems like someone must be making a lot of money on that bike, though I guess volume certainly comes into play.
My brother has a $3k (or more?) MTB, but unfortunately (fortunately?) I've only ridden it up and down his driveway, so I've never gotten the real mountain-biking itch. If I'm ever in Ottawa I'll have to decide if I want to risk getting that itch or not. :-)