It does have the benefit that the price affects the reputation of a TLD. I know there are some cheap TLDs that people block because their cheap price makes them

It does have the benefit that the price affects the reputation of a TLD. I know there are some cheap TLDs that people block because their cheap price makes them attractive for mass-registration by spammers. I don't like that administrators resort to blocking whole TLDs, and I don't like that there can be so much variation in profit between domains with no correlation to operational costs. Still, I can't say that it's purely a greedy move on their part. People do benefit from paying more.