As someone who rode his first two solo centuries on a comfort bike, I have a somewhat different take on this. I think a lot of the talk of the limits of upright bikes is driven by people who really have no experience riding them any distances. I'm constantly being told by people who ride far fewer miles than I do that if I had the bike they ride, I would ride more miles.I can't even grasp the logic of that.
I've no idea why these "what's wrong with the bike industry" threads keep popping up. I'm seeing more and more bicyclists out there every day, most of them riding pretty hard on bikes that a lot of the people posting here would turn their noses up at. Every morning, those department store bikes get a lot of non-spandex people to work, and kids to school.
If LBS go to a high-end only strategy, and get entirely out of the sub-$1000 bikes as seems to be happening in a lot of places, expect a lot of them to disappear in the next economic downturn. That will cut them out of a huge segment of the market and they already can't compete on the low end. So basically, they're now giving up on people who want something better than department store bikes but don't care about status and "high performance" features , and Dick's and the online retailers will be happy to take that segment from them permanently. Going to a luxury bike only strategy will work when the economy is hot, but it won't leave you with a lot of options when that segment inevitably cools off.