Cables more hype than value?

I honestly think many audiophiles people spent far too much on cables. Even though I use rather basic cables mostly I probably fall into the same category. I my current cables:

Interlinks: 930 (Heimdall 2 phono + 2*Pink Faun)
Speaker: 500 (6 feet NBS active IV)
powercords: 750 (NBS monitor IV, NBS Dragonfly)

That is 2180euro spend of my current cables. The retail price of my entire system is about 25000euro (I did not play close to that)including cables. If you look at it like that I spent far too much on cables. I think about 5 to 8% of the system costs should be on cables.

Why do people spend so much on a simple piece of copper wire? I can honestly not tell. Yes cables can have a minor influence on the sound quality. But it is rather marginal and for digital BNC cables I am not sure if there is any difference between a 50 and 5000 euro cable.

10% , at the very least, of your system's cost should be spent on cabling.

Who cares anyway??

Differences in cables is huge these days. What I do is many many blind tetst. Only wenn you do it this way people understand how big the influence is. What I said earlier: I give many blindtests with expensive amp/spource with cheap powercable or interconnect. And cheap amp/source with expensive powercable/interconnect. In most of the test people choose for the cheaper amp/source with more expensive cables. The thing is; use the right cables. There are many cables for sale who are not that great.

I have a hard time in believing that there are many "bad" cables. I think with brands like Cardas, Pink Faun, Kimber and Nordost you cannot really chose a bad cable. But I am open for suggestions. I am more or less looking for new speaker cables I live in the Netherlands.