£220 'for a cut-up sock' — Apples's new iPhone Pocket ridiculed online

People make irrational purchases all the time and I don't really see a problem with that. What makes me wince is when people are trying to rationalize their irrational purchases, especially with strangers. Or when strangers seek to make them feel silly or bad about it.

I see a problem with it. It

(1) makes companies market (lie) more aggressively, because it ends up working out.

(2) makes prices irrational, because if a bunch of stupid people will buy your shit product, why would you care about the 1% who actually do their research?

My hypothesis is that irrationality is economically inefficient at a macro scale; dollars flowing through manufactured irrational purchases get centralized into Apple’s coffers to be directed via their inefficient centralized decision making.

This hypothesis of course may be false - maybe Apple is better suited to take those irrational dollars and deploy them more rationally.

(1) But that's how commerce works. Does a product sell? Okay sell it more.

(2) People who "do their research" aren't entitled to anything. Maybe they just won't buy it? Then it's not for them. I don't understand what "makes prices irrational" would even mean in this context. The right price is whatever maximizes P * Q.