I'm just randomly jumping in here... but I really enjoyed a lot of your earlier discussion about different tiers developing in the market. I recently left the high end coffee and tea industry and got to see a similar situation unfolding there.
Most of America regularly consumes coffee in some form or another, but for most of the time period Americans have been drinking coffee, they've been drinking straight mass produced garbage coffee. Its just a cup of something hot and caffeinated they can guzzle down every day. I was surprised how many people actually dont even like the taste of the crap they drink every morning but just drink it anyway because it gets the job done and its cheap and available.
In the last decade or so things have started changing. People are slowly starting to figure out that good quality coffee thats actually fresh (i'm a snob dont get me started...) can actually taste really amazing and have all kinds of complexities and nuances just like you'd find in high end wine. As demand slowly starts to shift towards better quality, the market has really changed, and many of the mass producers are having to change their focus towards better quality to keep their share of the market.
There will always be people out there that just want a cup of hot, caffeinated dark colored beverage and dont give a shit what it tastes like, and those people can keep buying $3 cans of Maxwell House, but for those with a little more taste looking for the full experience, theres now a whole new world of tasty interesting possibilities to discover now that the market is opening up to the idea of quality>quantity.
As crap gets figured out legally, socially, politically ect. with marijuana I feel like the same thing is going to have to happen and its already kinda starting. I love that all the good clubs near me usually have $15-20 1/8ths for when I'm feeling poor, and $60 1/8ths of amazingness for when I feel like things are going well.
I imagine a world where those looking to "get the job done" can get $3-$5 grams of decent stuff, and those looking to "get their minds blown" can get 15$-$20 grams of smokeable sex. Just like some of us buy Walmart crap coffee for $3 a 5lb tub while some of us have discovered the advantages of coffee that costs $10-$20 a lb and will never go back to drinking that garbage.
(like I said... I'm a coffee/tea snob... lol)
Also the way I see it, more people growing (even if a lot of it is mass produced crap) does lead to more competition for exisiting growers, which admittedly will probably turn out bad for some of them. BUT more people growing can also only inevitably lead to an overall increase in quality across the whole market as connoisseur growers (just like small quality coffee companies) compete with each other to grow the best stuff imaginable and mass producers compete among themselves to supply the market with a better cheap product than their competitors (like Folgers, Yuban ect).
In the end it looks to me like everyone comes out ahead, except maybe some of the crappy growers growing mediocre bud while only in the game to try to make a quick buck who won't be able to compete with the prices/quantity of the mass producers or the quality of the connoisseur growers... and do we really need them anyway?
anyway... that concludes my long rambly 2cents.
lol