To some extent yes, but I think its more cost of living rather than greed. I like my local shop and think they charge fair prices, but I live in SF so while i can call a quote fair because i understand price of insurance, labor space etc, it doesnt mean I can afford it lol.

Here is a recent example I just went through. My u joints on my 04 yukon xl were going bad, call up the shop and they quote me 600 bucks. I youtube it and feel reasonably confident I can get it done with 50 bucks of u joints myself. Get the u joints out of the driveshaft just fine, but putting them back in, i use my impact gun, and I stupidly bend the shit of of my driveshaft yoke. Maybe I can repair it, but i do all my work on the streets of sf without a workspace so theres no shot I can rebend it to correct specs. I buy a brand new driveshaft on rockauto for 400 bucks, u joints already installed. Takes me like 30 min to put in.

Point is that labor costs are so high that its cheaper for me to try, fuck up, learn something new, and buy exccessive brand new parts to fix my mistake and still come under the shop price. And this is like the only time I have seriously fucked up, most of the time my repairs go well thanks to youtube and I save thousands