It’s the complexity penalty. For years, in trying to make the system “better” for the current definition of “better”, the system has been made more complex. Pro

It’s the complexity penalty. For years, in trying to make the system “better” for the current definition of “better”, the system has been made more complex. Probably to the point where no stakeholder understands it. But complexity breeds complexity (you need to understand something to not botch any change up) and the price of the system grows fater than the complexity (x times complexity increase leads to about x^1.5 times price increase, there’s research on it). It’s not profit margin, it’s the cost of dealing with the complexity. In a competitive market, companies with high complexity penalties can’t compete, get pushed out or are forced to reduce complexity by force. In this case, there is no external pressure to reduce complexity but an increasing number of parties seeking to benefit from it. Which leads to predictable consequence of complexity growing like crazy.