I'm not talking about rare books and antiquities, though. I'm talking about something far more common and mundane, and (to me at least) far more special.
The books I've inherited from my grandfather are not precious or valuable to anyone but me. They're precious because I know I'm touching the pages he touched, and when I come across the notes he's made in the margins, they're in his hand, written with the pen I remember watching him use when I was a child.
Most of us can't afford to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on rare books. But most of us can afford a couple dollars for a paperback at the used book store—even those of us who can't spend the $80-$200 that the OP calls "cheap" for a Kindle.
This is one of the reasons I like ebooks for their convenience and ability to be widely distributed, but I would be devastated to see them replace bound books as the only choice.
We're seeing the way that movie and music companies are eager to trample over consumers in the name of protecting their copyrights. Do we really want to turn books into something that can only be read if you have the right device to display them? I don't trust Amazon, Apple, or anyone else to be the gatekeeper of my books. I want the ability to turn my back on them if they start editing, deleting, or censoring books. I want to be able to say "fine, then, I'll just go to the store and get a real book, and your Kindle can suck it."
Some of my worries seem almost silly today, but we've seen too many things go from far-fetched to reality in a generation or less.
I have to say, I'm still pessimistic about bound books however. Perhaps future generations will be reading old books on their grandfather's Kindle and looking at old notes recorded on it -- interesting thought -- kind of bizarre to think about, even in this age.
This one aspect of the lack of ownership that I find problematic, but you don't see discussed as much. The way things are going, you won't even be able to inherit someone's kitchen table because they'd bought a $500 license for their immediate family to eat off of it. Died? Factory repossesses it.
Is a first edition of Robinson Crusoe a precious object? Of course. It's also (I'm guessing) quite rare and extremely expensive. Yet anyone with a Kindle or Nook (or even a computer) can get Robinson Crusoe from Project Gutenberg for free. Most of the PG audience isn't going to be able to afford a library full of fine leather-bound books. The choice isn't between the fine leather-bound book and the etext. It's between the etext and not being able to read the book at all.
We've seen this play out in many other areas. Mass-produced clothing is another example -- is it as nice as individually-tailored clothing? Nope. But most of us can't afford a wardrobe full of custom-tailored stuff (and historically, people didn't; most folks had a set of "work clothes" and maybe one set of "Sunday clothes", if that).
For that matter, exactly the same scenario played out when the printing press was introduced. Esthetes decried the loss of the hand-written medieval volumes, lovingly calligraphed and illuminated by highly skilled scribe/artists. They were breathtakingly beautiful. One book also cost somewhere around a year's wages for a skilled worker.