I totally agree with you BUT....  this is the heart of capitalism.  Supply and demand.  In an area where there is no competition, it's easy to raise our prices.  However, when there are a lot of abstractors available (such as a metro area), people will always drop the price in order to secure work.

And let's not forget India.  We're up against India in every county that's on line.  While some clients will pay the extra cost to keep the work locally, most nationwide contractors will not.  The pressure to keep prices low isn't going to change and that's why there are so few newcomers to this industry.  Eventually, there will only be those specialists left out here who can handle the big commercial projects that India cannot.  Prices will be high for those kinds of orders because there is no choice: it's the specialist or a title company whose price will always be forced to be much higher.

For now, raising prices just isn't in the cards for most of us.  It has nothing to do with valuing ourselves and everything to do with competition.