bride price: tradition or rip off?

Am back, and this time its for sure. Been along time since I shouted out, but this will change. Want to veer off my thoughts to what has been disturbing me for a long time. The question of bride price. This was a noble tradition in human history, but so much commercialized that it hurts. The tradition even in its roots had flaws since essentially the woman became the property of the man.
Any right thinking individual agrees that someone being property of the other is totally unacceptable, but the same people, I have no idea why, since want to advocate and support in one way or the other the paying of monies to a girls parents whenever she is to be married. Wht do you equate yourself to money? where is the line? Allow me to define money, from the Oxford Standard dictionary:
1 [U] what you earn by working or selling things, and use to buy things:
3 [U] a person's wealth including their property:
To me, anything which is paid for with money becomes something bought and equitable to someone's property. And please dont give me the crap of 'its a sign of appreciation' since if it was, the man would be giving what he thinks is ok, and can range from a worthless piece of paper with poeams written on, to a pair of shos bought off at some shaddy joint in River Road.
I'll be back wit more thoughts on this ......