and it just keeps getting faster and people keep getting more and more... entitled? accustomed? to things happening fast in ways that make them impossible to satisfy without big investment or a big company.
the more the Rando Gestalt, including you probably for some things, including me for many things, think the current state is normal and smaller groups should match or be below the price of companies that have way more ways to pay the bills for development and labor, the more impossible it becomes to run anything outside of the big companies or the ones in someone's pocket.
"buy local" somehow got spun into the environmental cost of truck transit and not if you don't buy from those places, even if they're more expensive, they'll die. and then the Super Amamart or whatever products will go up in price to match the now dead niche instead of continuing the undercutting.
same goes for niche computer utilities, or websites, or open source projects you should probably kick 15$ to if you use them daily even if you hate their documentation (I wonder why it's so sparse, they're making 27$ a month off it 🙄).
The more features you push hard for that something should have that it doesn't yet, the more speed you think they should be caused at, the more you're looking for companies valued over one hundred million dollars. That's how they get that change density, that's how they can hire enough engineers to parallel-specialize, etc.
