Having said that, the profusion of really really good modestly priced pro-am cameras has spawned an ugly race-to-the-bottom on stock photography. You can get ( often quite good ) stock photos for next to nothing from the low cost stock photography sites.
To put it in HN parlance, Getty's model has been thoroughly 'disrupted'.
The micro stock model has worked because pricing was high. It's swung the other way. Fair value is not received in many cases.
Now we are living exceptional times in that cost of hardware to do good work is so cheap that anyone can have a go at photography / programming / ...
Surely if "the art" is actually a quality that objectively exists and has value, it will resist attack from those that lack it.
If you want Art, you can go put up a gallery, and whine there about how the little people who aren't paying you money don't properly appreciate your vision.
If you want business.... Economics 150, friend: In an efficient market, the marginal cost of a new unit of something is the same as its price. If that's less than what you think is "fair", perhaps that's a signal that (a) there are too many people in this market, don't bother, use your skills and/or equipment elsewhere, or (b) someone else can get snazzy photos to people-who-buy-snazzy-photos more efficiently than you.
The price of photographic equipment, the price of introduction to stock-photo companies, the price of accepting-stock-photo-company-terms-and-conditions, and the price of browsing-stock-photo-catalogs have all fallen dramatically thanks to technology and the Internet. That run-of-the-mill stock photos are now much cheaper ought to be expected.
Lets go one by one on the photos on that landing page in terms of minimum equipment and people behind them... short obviously of a camera and an achieved photographer, that is already hard enough to come by and expensive but is a common factor in all images.
Katana image: model, make up, big room with stupidly expensive lamps, costume, katana, watermelon, more than one 1k/2k+ flash head.
War image: ticket to war zone, bulletproof vest, AK-47, missile launcher, missile, model/combatant. Very likely many pro camera bodies, pro to resist dust, many to have spares. You won't find a pro body there if one breaks up, unless you can loot a dead photographer.
London image: helicopter, helicopter pilot, weather controlling machine (can be replaced by an insane amount of luck or many tries and a lot of time in each one).
Guy with car hat: model, car hat, not sure if only one flash head or camera mounted strobe. I'm not sure of how much a car hat costs but I think this is the cheapest photo of the lot.
NB I was curious what the low linear building in the lower center of the image is - it's the roof of Liverpool Street Station.
I agree that the serious hobbyists that feed micro stock companies those 2 dollar pictures will not compete with warzone shots, shots requiring $$$ cost in travel, props, lots of models or whatever to set up unless they happen to be professionals "double-dipping" on a paid shoot. The cash just isn't in it.
The Micro-stock guys might surprise you though at how much cash they have invested in gear ( including lights ) Some of them take perfectly good photos of subjects that might previously have only been sourced more expensively through agency or in house.
Or some reasonably talented kid with Blender (or a warezed copy of Maya) could knock them all out in a weekend, without spending a dime on anything not made by Domino's Pizza or the Coca-Cola Company.
If not now, then soon.
Getty makes its money on both ends. They're also slowly rising the purchase prices for both user submission sites to be around $70/photo average compared to $10-20 two years back.
Let's take the katana image, f'rinstance. You want to use it for your French-language extreme cookery magazine? Cool. That leaves the image available for the Karate-gi supplier's worldwide site and catalog, as well as for publication in languages other than French (unless you wanted a worldwide print publication exclusive). If you want first publication rights and exclusivity for a year, you've tied up all other rights in the image.
The rights you want in the image may or may not be available, and if they are available, they will determine the licensing fee because they affect the remaining rights. If you go to a place like iStockphoto, you don't get any kind of exclusivity, and can find that every one of your competitors are using exactly the same images you are using. Oh, and so is the weekend "contractor" down the street—you know, the guy with the Skilsaw, cordless drill/driver and Workmate who ruins people's bathrooms and kitchens (but is so affordable). You get what you pay for.
If you'd like something cheaper (which generally won't look as good, won't have the metadata searching capabilities you needs as a professional photo editor, or may not go with the story you're trying to illustrate), the market will provide - in the form of iStockPhoto and others.
Getty's main client base doesn't ever purchase just one photo, will rarely look at the price on the website (they know what they need, and already know roughly what it will cost), and more often than not will have their own separate pricing contract with Getty that looks nothing like that series of drop-down boxes.
If you're searching for an individual photo, looking at the price, and considering if you need it - you're just icing on the cake for Getty, as opposed to the target of their business model.
Even Getty has such a section: http://www.gettyimages.ch/creativeimages/royaltyfree
Of course, the really great looking photos often are not royalty free, which is why Getty features those on that page.
Saying "$160? What a joke." puts you in the same category as the guys on rentacoder asking for $100 Photoshop clones.
There're a lot of cheaper alternatives with a very direct pricing. See for instance: http://photodune.net/
However Getty does have some really nice images!
A lot of these folks are keenly interested not just in the images themselves, but also in the contexts and markets where they may have previously appeared. Often, the fewer associations an image has, the more likely they are to buy it. And if they want to ensure that no one else buys something they're working with, they'll pay very substantial amounts for full exclusivity.