I think that's rather missing the point, but it's also not really true, because that ratio is substantially smaller if you talk about all the different bits of

I think that's rather missing the point, but it's also not really true, because that ratio is substantially smaller if you talk about all the different bits of hardware that are having to decode the JSON. The relative cost there is extraordinary, let alone the complexity cost. You can make tools that present data in any format in a way that is easy for humans to digest. Letting a very small and trivial part of the problem drive what is a much larger problem space is pretty flawed.