Lowering prices doesn't make the product more "accessible" if you can't supply enough to keep up with demand at that price. It just turns the purchasing process into a lottery rather than a bidding war. I can't say I find the former process any more in line with the Pi foundation's stated goals than the latter.
If the goal is 'get it into the hands of students to further computer science education', then the lottery might end up getting more into student hands than an auction. Remember students are pretty poor compared to VC backed startups trying to deploy their latest IoT blender with Blockchain technology.
>so let's say that you target people who can only afford $30 computers
I cannot name a single person who has bought a RPi that isn't either a generously-compensated STEM worker or a member of their immediate family.
I also cannot name a single person who has bought an RPi that doesn't already own a mid-to-high-end desktop or laptop.
Poor people buy used smartphones or refurbed ex-office PCs.
EDIT: This probably explains why there's a strong scalper's market for this, thinking about it. Raspberry Pi's typical customers are wealthy enough to not care about paying an extra few bucks.
That makes sense, assuming "people who can only afford $30 computers" are your sole priority. If you also care about, for example, "people who can only afford $40 computers", then a better approach would be to raise prices to match market value and use the resulting profits to increase supply.
As another poster noted, a lot of businesses are basing their product lines on the Pi and Pi Compute Module. To those businesses, the market price can rise well past $40 and completely out of the "hobbyist price range" before it becomes worth it to them to find alternatives. With the difficulty of finding components these days, that "increase in supply" that the increased revenue brings to the Pi Foundation may not come for a very long time.
I developed a pi-based system for a well-known company that now has a few hundred deployed at various sites. I can assure you that they wouldn't blink at $200 each. There are businesses out there redesigning their products because they can't find any at all.
