An interesting phenomenon. I have a course a couple of miles from my house that's ranked among the best in Canada, and it's public access - a CCFAD type of place. It's $175 prime time, which is high for our market. Unlike your case with Pinehurst, I have played this course a couple of times, but only at half price rates in the late fall. I refuse to play it otherwise. The price/value proposition isn't right outside of a splurge occasion. And, the pace of play is terrible and the players they attract seem to have more money than golf brains. And, there are other equally attractive courses at much more reasonable prices.
On the other hand, I've often dropped that much or more on foreign splurge occasions - Pebble, TOC, Bandon ......... I guess the difference is that those places were infrequent splurges, and I have played the the local course and my curiosity is satisfied. But, there is undeniably an attraction for the foreign famous courses. More confusing is that in some cases - Pebble and Castle Stuart come to mind - where once was enough at the prices they charge. At others, like TOC and Dornoch, I was willing to pay the freight more than one time. There's some intrinsic value thing going on that is hard to put into words. For some, like Bandon, they have grown out of my price comfort range even for splurges. And, some like Pinehurst, I've looked around, but couldn't bring myself to pay the price. It just didn't look like I was going to walk off and say, wow, was that ever worth the expenditure. It is priced out of my value system even for a splurge.
For some of the high end courses, I guess the business model is based on a national or world market. Maybe for them, there are enough one time splurge players to make the club work economically. If the business model is based on repeat local play from hard core golfers then I think it can't succeed. In these times there can't be that many big spenders left.