system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
Why should they sell 4090s for 900$ if they can sell it for 1600$. If noone had bought the 4090 at msrp or above, then Nvidia would have been forced to lower their price. But as you might have noticed, 4090s are sold out everywhere. Supply and demand, this is how Capitalism works

Edit: Also, 200$ GPUs are a thing of the Past. The fix costs of GPUs have risen (Copper, Aluminum, etc.) AMD tried with the rx 6500xt and failed miserably.
gpt
Meanwhile the 4080 is a dead product because its MSRP is way too high for a card that's significantly weaker than the 4090. That or the 4090 price is actually too low.

The customer at that price tier doesn't care about the 4080 because for the price difference it's a no brainier to just get the big card.