A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?"

Yet for some reason when the field isn't exactly an area of expertise for most HN readers, and the author of the book is giving only common sense financial advice, you get tons of people here saying that the book is pretty decent because it reaffirms common sense financial advice. Never mind that you can find most of this advice on the Internet... For Free!

So my question is, why isn't there more outrage that Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book and charges $11-20/book for common sense advice, but when people try to charge money to teach Ruby, people on HN get angry? Is it the price? Wouldn't you say that to someone who knows nothing about either subject, that a $3K class that teaches you a skill is worth more than a $20 advice book?