I looked at one of those cheap basses sites - AliExpress IIRC - and there was an Alembic SC copy for a couple of hundred quid - looked very enticing.
HOWEVER I know that it's most likely a POS - however there will be would-be players seeing these and thinking that they've grabbed a bargain, only to find that the "bargain" they thought they were getting is rubbish at best, virtually unplayable at worst.
This will demoralise the new players, thinking that they have little or no ability, and chuck the towel in. Alternatively they will persevere for a while, make little or no gains and eventually chuck the towel in.
When money is tight people will look for less expensive alternatives - in this case though it will drive people away from making music and stop any future spending in the instrument market. Music isn't about elitism but by pushing prices up companies will make it so - at least from the point of sales of new instruments. Inadvertently music companies may cause their own demise.
We may find that in the future instruments sales will be self build kits, "custom builds" by luthiers or used instruments. I've said this many times - at the moment it's pretty difficult to find a badly built bass, however if the market ends up being flooded with shite, poorly built instruments, this may not continue to be true.
We, on the other hand, who suffer from GAS and currently hoard the quality items, may in the end save the second hand Bass guitar market.
Big manufacturers beware - you may find that the marketing strategy of selling high backfires and instead fuels the used "vintage" instrument market.