You’re exactly right. Truth is, the consumer has all the power, not the developer/seller. Just don’t pay for the product. It is that simple.
I’ve seen a situation of rapid inflation on the market (real life, not EVE), where consumer prices for certain items shot up 100%+ in a relatively short period of time. And people complained. A lot. But that’s all they did. Everybody still kept buying that stuff. If consumer stops buying, the seller/developer has no other choice but to either lower the prices, or come up with something else like offer some kind of additional benefits to make the items at inflated cost more lucrative. I’m talking in very general terms here, of course, not everything adheres to this, but the consumer is not powerless here.
I also believe that CCP has run their numbers on this. They did a 50% off sale in the Paragon Hub for SKIN sequencing at least once. If the profits during 50% off exceed profits during normal sales, they would lower the sequencing prices. The fact that they don’t tells me it is more profitable at current prices, even though people sequence less.