While I believe there is quite a lot of waste, I still think that such a change would have a huge impact on movie making and other things. I don't know enough

While I believe there is quite a lot of waste, I still think that such a change would have a huge impact on movie making and other things. I don't know enough about the Blender movies and the cost involved, so I have to adress it in a "strawman" like way by comparing it to open software: Having volunteers working on it for free greatly reduces cost, but diminishes that those often have jobs in the related industry, indirectly funding the project and helping the peoples skills. Switching to free software for everyone (forbidding advertisements and data collection for further income of course!) on a small tax scheme would very likely have a devastating consequence medium term for open source software as well. But all of this is just speculation by me.