Perhaps I’m muddied in semantics, but I don’t think the complaint can be “Audible exploits people.” I think it is, “someone needs to exploit the opportunity Audible has presented by charging so much.”
I think "Audible exploits people" is a perfectly valid complaint. But it's important to understand that it's the natural inclination of corporations to exploit people whenever they can, and if you want them to stop, you need to make it harder for them to do so.
There's a lot of ways you can do that. By introducing regulation, competition, empowering people, or even banning corporations. The first two seem to be the most popular in our society.
That's the option I like too, but it's easier said than done. We have these quasi-monopolies popping up around digital intellectual property of nearly every sort: charge a lot. Everybody uses Microsoft Office. There's only a handful of Hollywood studios. Etc. Etc.
It seems that for some combination of legal and technical reasons it's very hard to beat an incumbent in these industries. Maybe it's just that the economies of scale are so good, I don't know. but when you think about it, everything involved is man-made, the very concept of intellectual property itself is a human invention. Patents, copyrights etc. all just stuff we cooked up. If we have defined it to be a self-reinforcing monopoly-generating thing, maybe we should redefine it.
Perhaps I’m muddied in semantics, but I don’t think the complaint can be “Audible exploits people.” I think it is, “someone needs to exploit the opportunity Audible has presented by charging so much.”