1. Being offered a service you would pay a lot of money for is a step forward. When people pay a large amount of money for something that means they wanted the thing more than the money. The link between ChatGPT and libraries being under threat seems a bit weak too.
2. The Chinese have been investing a lot into free models, they're perfectly good and keep improving; despite the best efforts of the US. They're even ramping into making their own hardware. Gemma 4 is pretty snappy too. It doesn't seem like there is much of a moat to this, my guess is there will be perfectly good local models if you want to avoid AI companies.
When people pay a large amount of money for something that means they wanted the thing more another thing. Money just provides the method to defer value transfer.
When the person paying the money is rich, the other thing they are foregoing is typically not a life necessity. When the person is poor, however, it typically is.