> The price of domains should trend down. not up.
Why? The value of a dollar goes down over time, but the value of a domain does not.
Why? The value of a dollar goes down over time, but the value of a domain does not.
Value and Cost are very different things. ICANN is a governing organization, and once they're allowed to extract funds greater than what it costs them to operate, just means they're abusing their power.
The value of high-demand domain names should increase on the secondary markets. But, the price of unregistered names should be decreasing.
Domains are more like real estate. They can become almost arbitrarily expensive on the global market because they represent a somewhat exhaustible resource of phrases that people can actually remember.
As with any system where you have private resource owners controlling a basic need you should expect corruption and abuse of the customer base. From Water Barons to Landlords to Cable/Broadband companies the pattern repeats itself time and time again. This is why we have regulated industries.