well, i'd argue that "consumer products" with prices above national median (net) monthly income levels are beyond "affordable".
while in the past electrical household products such as stoves, washing machines, fridges etc where in that range, we are luckily beyond that thanks to sufficient global competition for these products. Today it is typicallly only cars in the "need a loan to buy" product category. at least in economically well developed countries.
imaging gear priced beyond 3000 USD/€ are pure "luxury goods" in the same category as luxury watches, jewellery, works of art, etc.
of course true fanbois (Canon or any other brand) will consider any price "justified" and even the most exotic product follies a "piece of art", be it a "normal fov" lens like a Z 58mm/0.95, a standard tele zoom like a "grandmaster" 70-200/2.8 or a "standard zoom" like a 28-70mm/2.0 or "middle-class" cameras with pedestrian specs priced at 2500 USD/€. in reality a manual focus 58/1.2 lens irca zeiss Otus are asinine "Ford Edsel" type products in late 2018.
all of those high priced imaging products are objectively outside the realm of being "affordable" to regular income earners in even the most affluent countries on this planet.
it is also an objective fact that the highly oligopolist nature of the imaging gear industry and their extremely "proprietary" technology and "anti competition business practices" are the main reason for those high prices. basically it is a state similar to the car industry up to the 1970s, before japanese (remember those early datsuns and hondas?) and later on korean manufacturers (remember those first, sorry little hyundai ponyies and see where Hyundai and Kia are today) broke the price regime of the US and European car makers oligopoly. up until then every last Buick or oldsmobile clunker and every sorry Fiat or Renault rust heap cost an inordinate amount of money and could still be sold to customers who had little or no choice.
regrettably the only joint/common standard initiative in the digital imaging gear market was and still is (Micro) Four Thirds ... unfortunately with a sensor too small to effectively compete. not oin gear size, not in performance, not in price. duh.
unfortunately nobody saw fit to join forced abd enter the market with a common, OPEN STANDARD mirrorfree FF-sensored system about 5 years ago, when the window of opportunity was wide open.
Had Fuji, Panasonic, Olympus, Sigma, Ricoh, Cosina, Samsung, Samyang, Leica - or just some of them - joined forces for a mirrorfree 36x24mm "FF" system back in 2012, instead of all trying their own proprietary systems with wrong sensor tech (sigma, Fuji) and/or too small imaging circle stuff, they could have broken the Canon/Nikon/Sony triopol and had a realistic chance to be the leading force in the market by today.
and all of us "non-fan boys" would have a choice of reasonable, non-exotic and affordable imaging gear along the lines of eg the new, compact, decent Samyang AF lenses - but without any compromises in functionality as a result of "reverse engineering" of proprietary tech which the triopol refuses to license.
as it stands, we can only hope for the next wave of disruptive technology to open a new window of opportunity. it will likely be the paradigm shift technology that finally frees us from large glass optics ... multi-camera/lightfield type computational imaging. Lytro and Light (L16) were "too weak, too little, too early", but it will happen, eventually.
unfortunately we are still a number of years away from that. meanwhile canon, nikon, sony can continue to offer exotic follies like f/0.95 lenses at 5k a pop or 28-70/2.0 zooms at 4k a pop ... INSTEAD OF "truly useful to many users" products like an up-to-date, decent IQ 50/1.4 IS lens priced at a reasonable, fair and affordable 399 usd or €.
so much for "affordable" and "imaging gear" market.
