I don't know, from my limited experiences locally, we are pretty good/fair with each other. It's tough to find the right circle of people though, and weed out those simply in it for the money.
Nanook, to be fair, you really should have brought up vendors. I can think of a couple right off the bat that ridiculously jack up prices for the same corals I see locally. And no, it has nothing to do with location and extra shipping
Or even worse, obtaining a coral, somehow determining it to be "Exclusive" or "LE", fragging it to TINY bits, and actually selling those bits...$$$ I find this much more unsavory than some local guy trying to recoup a tiny fraction of the high cost of San Diego electricity. A vendor with national visibility on the web has a much bigger influence on the trends you are mentioning, IMHO, than some local Joe Schmo.
My 2 cents.
