Can't help but get a sense that this gun writer isn't happy about how rifles have evolved over the last couple decades; quite traditionalist in his views.
IMHO, he's completely overlooking a couple of realities...
1) The market: While manufacturers may try to shape or move markets, for the most part they respond to it with products on which buyers want to spend their money...and generally speaking, as little of their money as is possible.
Why do gun makers produce $300 to $800 rifles of the relatively spartan variety? Simple. Because people buy them...apparently lots of 'em.
How do they make rifles that can sell for $300 to $800 and still shoot and handle well? With creativity, ingenuity, and the application of ever improving technologies.
2) There's lots of makers still producing "traditional" rifles that generally sell in the range of $900 to $1500...because there's a big market for these, too. And there's few makers producing rifles that sell in the $2000 to $4000 range into a marketplace that, while small compared to the afored mentioned, still can offer up enough bucks to make it worth the effort.
And of course, there's those makers of fine weapons in the $10,000 to $100,000 plus range most of us dream of, but probably never will own, for the same sort of market that also has a taste for Land Rovers, 20 yearold scotch, and hunting estates.
3) The good news is that there still are very decent quality rifles that shoot straight, often remarkably so, and hold together reliably over the long haul, available to the average working stiff who has relatively limited resources with which to apply to his passion for sport shooting and hunting.
Frankly, I think the author is more choked that his idea of a traditional rifle generally falls within the $1000 to $1500 range instead of the $300 to $800 spread than anything else.
I've handled and shot a Tikka T3. Let's be honest about this, a lot of rifles with considerably higher price tags should only shoot as well, with actions that operate as silky smooth, and carry as easily as these puppies!!!
That many...meaning rifles carrying brand names that our grand-daddies cut their teeth on...unfortunately don't, I would suggest, is perhaps the underlying irritant to this author.
As for the relationship between gun writers and manufacturers that he suggests has become too cozy...
I buy and read about half a dozen rifle/gun mags every month, with articles written by the likes of Layne Simpson, Craig Boddington, Jon Sundra, John Barsness, Ron Spomer, etc, etc, etc...all well respected and popular and regarded, to one degree or another, as authorities on firearms and hunting. And for the most part, all pretty balanced and fair in their assessments of whatever product they might be testing and writing about for the pages of a magazine. If they weren't, that same marketplace would have weeded them out before they even got started. That's how the marketplace works.
On the other hand, up until half an hour ago, I'd never heard of Chuck Hawks.
Whatever.
FWIW.