Why do folks spend more on electronics than on speakers?

My guess is that for many rooms, having more expensive speakers (often correlated with bigger boxes and deeper bass extension) is not yielding the same increase in performance as an increase in the quality of the electronics. 

In Japan or Western Europe, people have smaller living spaces and it is very rare to have dedicated hifi rooms for people living in big cities. It must be the same in New York, SF or Seattle. It might make sense to have transparent, high achieving speakers like Spendors, ProAc and others at 6-8k and have excellent upstream components rather than the big Wilsons in the living room. And the missus probably wouldn't like to have big boxes in the middle of a 300 sqf living room ;-)

These are all great points thank you all for sharing.

@runwell, to your comment about speaker capability. Are you saying that it is more costly to get quality electronics vs speakers at a give price point? E.g. less expensive speakers are more capable than the electronics driving them?

One other thought, what about componet matching? Wouldn't going electronics first kind of limit what speakers one can use? While if one lands on a speaker they like then they can find the appropriate gear to drive it.

I can only talk for myself, but if I had not built my own spekaers my spend would be around 1/3rd in room acoustics, electronics and speakers.

I'm with you OP, spend way too much for your loudspeakers, then add better electronics as you go along. Good loudspeakers and mid-range electronics sound better than top electronics and mediocre loudspeakers. The reason being that loudspeakers have more distortion than electronics. YMMV.