> But no such cheaper options exist

None? Project Solar? The last time I seriously looked at doing rooftop panels, they were significantly cheaper than the door-to-door jerks.

Depends on many factors. If installers are able to fully fill their available time and crews with jobs at the current price and expanding is limited by the availability of new crews high prices could be a stable equilibrium until a) more crews become available/techniques improve to speed up install times or b) demand relaxes and they need to drop their price to find sufficient customers.

There's also other factors like the overall cost being beyond people's willingness to save for when financing is available or the extra value that financed installs can provide the underwriters when they're bundled and sold as a stable income stream like houses were in the mid 00s.

"If it can be done cheaper someone will" is based on a lot of simplifications and assumptions about the market in question.

Unless there are enough marks for everyone to scam. Then the focus is to extract the money instead of investing in crushing the competition.

Not necessarily. There are little-known monopolies like the eyewear, travel agencies, and cargo fuel (there are many more!) where price fixing like this happens.

This makes me want to start a solar company.

AI can't take my job then.

One indicator is that third world countries can seem to afford it.

"But no such cheaper options exist"

Untrue, at Sunspark we sold to both individuals and companies. If you can install the stuff yourself, buying it direct from the manufacturer is ungodly cheap (~330w panels at $80 a piece when I worked there almost decade ago.)

I call this "the capitalism fallacy": it doesn't exist in the (my) market, therefore it's not possible.

The fallacy is that there are infinite market opportunities but a finite supply of entrepeneurs/business/money to exploit them. Therefore, there are an infinite number of market opportunities that will get passed up for one reason or another.