Why does everything feel like a scam?

I live in New York, which is a very expensive city, so I have become somewhat desensitized to paying stupid amounts of money for normal things. I don’t regularly experience sticker shock because, to some extent, I live inside the sticker shock. But lately, even I have been losing the plot. A few months ago, I paid $35 for tortellini at a restaurant and received four pieces of tortellini. I recently saw supermarket strawberries listed for $15. The other day I was shopping for a trash can and discovered that a distressing percentage of them cost more than $100. And...