Deterministic software puts the user in control of the product. Nondeterministic algos put the products in control of the user. Naturally companies want the latter and under guises of the ‘now better’ give the user worse and charge them more. A new generation isn’t even aware they’re being fleeced because they don’t have anything to compare with. And the frog boils slowly…
I think of your suggested idea of objective reviews and classifications quite often, but the problem ends up being discoverability. There have been a handful of sites that were highly useful by aggregating price and consumer sentiment/recommendations from Reddit. They get initial visibility and search traffic, then get penalized by Google. Froogle/Google shopping gets priority and is the only aggregator that Google really wants to include.
Look at defunct sites like Nextag that were moderately useful in the space-- they had free and paid placements. They were steadily growing search visibility until Google started pushing their own product (Froogle, free product listings in 2014ish) and Nextag suddenly "violated Google's policies" and lost 90%+ of their traffic rather quickly (probably 1MM daily visits to under 10k basically overnight). Google shopping technically offers "free product listing placement", hidden well below the ads-- likely as a defense to anti-trust on monopolization of that specific space.
Brickseek and CamelCamelCamel are the two most successful/long lived tools in the space-- and they grew their visibility from the now defunct but once huge deal site FatWallet and SlickDeals. Walled garden subreddits frequently disallow posting of specific tools, so it makes organic growth super challenging-- given that pretty much all commercial queries start with Google or Amazon.
I was speaking more generally than reviews or classification sites. I really meant virtually any application. It's just that it's a long, slow grind to build the reputation and differentiation from the big tech products you're competing with.
Consumers can't pay. Part of the grift has been the concentration of capital in the hands of the highest wealth-holders, who all seem to have the same idea as to where to put their money (hence, uncomfortably, the bidding up of tech compensation to where it is now). So, no, you're not going to be able to Adobe/Autodesk-style price gouge. However, if you show customers the value proposition (generally some aspect of longevity or portability that prevents expensive upgrades or lock-in), they'll pay when they can. And until sanity returns to the economy, partnering with a credit facility of some sort might be wise (for you, not the customer).
Okay, no, we don't have to go down this nobody-can-afford-anything rabbit hole.
There are people out there that will pay. The issue is not that there isn't willing consumers to pay for it, it's that you're undiscoverable until word-of-mouth builds around your product among people(like those in this very thread) know and talk about your product going against the grain.
This entire thread reads like multiple people circling around product opportunities. There are users out there who want control and will pay for something no-frills. You might not get big VC money to build this, but you could build this.