This only goes to support the initial shop complained about in Post #1: if you work too cheap and/or virtually for free as your buddy was (I'm going to classify $60 for a brake job as "virtually free"), people will abuse it.
They don't mean to -- it's simply good practice to pay the least you can for a product or service if all other things are (more-or-less) equal.
Based on the free market, if shops price themselves out of the market and business drops, there will be a correction.
So, it once again returns to do-it-yourself if you think the cost of skilled labor is too high. People could also make different decisions every, oh, say, four years, but we don't dare discuss that here. It's nice to think greed is the only thing driving labor prices, but I've had to increase my charges because everyone else is charging me more: electrical, gas, insurance, shipping, shop supplies and, yes, even groceries (a mekanik's gotta eat) just to name a few.