It always makes me laugh when people suggest that a system that will allow people with little or no money to compete with people with deep pockets is somehow "fairer" than a system where people can participate according to their means. That argument has so many holes in it you could drive a bus through it without touching the sides.
Real estate is actually a superb analogy. You don't see anyone (seriously) advocating that houses should not be allowed to be sold to the person able to pay most for them, but should be artificially priced at some randomly chosen low price so that low income folks can afford them. Yes, many countries make an effort to make
some housing affordable to all (or most) buyers, but it's certainly not the prime properties in the best locations. Hey, you can buy any unregistered domain you like for $7.95 or less - but it's not going to be the best domain you
could get.
How about art? Would anyone waste time walking into an art gallery and arguing that they should sell you a Picasso for $500 because that's "fair" and their original $million price-tag excluded all but the richest folks?
The parallel between domains and art is even better than the parallel between domains and real estate. How much does art REALLY cost? An average sized bit of canvas and paint might set you back a few hundred dollars. But the MARKET (i.e. capitalism) multiplies the value of the raw materials thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands of times in some cases because individual pieces of art (like domains) are unique and some are coveted by large numbers of people (like domains) and rapidly appreciate in value (like domains) so can also be seen as great investments (like domains).
In fact, there are dozens more parallels where the "raw material" cost is essentially irrelevant in the final equation. Take a book, for example. The raw cost of the latest Harry Potter book is perhaps a hundred dollars' worth of paper and printer ink, plus J.K.Rawling's time - yet she's able to command tens of millions of dollars for the
rights to that book. At exactly the same time, thousands of authors with books exactly the same length, written at exactly the same time, are receiving minute royalty cheques or even having to pay to self-publish their work.
A domain name is a piece of intellectual property in its purest form, like a book or a piece of music or an artwork that has been abstracted to remove the "real" component leaving only the concept/rights behind. As such, its raw cost is irrelevant. Even if domains only cost $0.001 to register, this doesn't stop some being WORTH millions and hence SOLD for millions.
The market decides. The market decides. The market decides.
Repeat the above mantra a couple of times when you next get crazy ideas about "fairness"
