As an electrician, it's an easier concept to sell your service. The overhead costs are far less than a CI's. As a CI, there are many more factors that we have to deal with in order to be succesful. Training, testing, inventory, and many other things affect the bottom line. Margins are shrinking because of the current economic conditions and with the age of the internet so in order to stay in business we will have to raise our labor rates. I'm all for selling service but something needs to pay for my training, testing, the time it takes to write up bids, and looking at this site every day ;) I think this whole Lutron debate is because guys want to protect their business. I for one am excited about RA2 and hope Lutron won't let anyone with a pulse install it.