externalising developer cost onto runtime performance only makes sense if humans will spend more time writing than running (in aggregate).

Essentially you’re telling me that the software being made is not useful to many people; because the cost of writing the software (a handful of developers) will spend more time writing the software than their userbase will in executing their software.

Otherwise you’re inflicting something on humanity.

Dumping toxic waste in a river is much cheaper than properly disposing of it too; yet we understand that we are causing harm to the environment and litigate people who do that.

Slow software is fine in low volumes (think: shitting in the woods) but dumping it on huge numbers of users by default is honestly ridiculous (Teams, I’m looking at you: with your expectation to run always and on everyones machine!)