No, we make products to do stuff. The problem with simplifying is that you take power out of the hands of those who know how to use it, by reducing the combinatoric explosion of paths through your program down to just a few easy-to-understand use-cases. In the end you get software that looks and feels like it was built for children, but is instead targeted at adults, and if that adult wants to do anything outside of the easy-to-use program's very narrow and opinionated understanding of the world, that adult is shit-out-of-luck.

In a model of software consumption where users aspire to better themselves, yes the beginner is stymied but the possibility is still there for completing the task. That's not possible in our current model -- either the program works and you use it the way the designer intended, or you're fucked.

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I agree with your general point. The trend in the last ~10 years of simplifying UIs did a lot of good; as low an opinion as I have of Apple, they deserve a lof of credit for spearheading and popularizing this trend. But for whatever reason, people are unable to understand the concept of trade-offs and flipped from "all power, no usability" to systematically ignoring the value of "ability to do custom things with your computing devices". The mantra seems to have become: every design decision should be made in favor of the user being a perpetual neophyte, no matter what the costs to the value and capability of the system. Systems that allow for gently increasing competence create the most value for the user, but we're stuck in a shitty low-utility equilibrium where it's easier to market systems where you can do ~100% right off the bat. The rub is that this was achieved by lowering the value of 100%, not making it easier to achieve.

There's an alternative which satisfies both constraints: simplify UIs for the most common use cases while still allowing access to arbitrary amounts of capability for those who want it. There's a reason that every personal computer in my family runs on some flavor of Ubuntu: the default GNOME setup is 50x easier to use than any Windows computer[1] for people like my dad, who's a non-savvy enough user that he still struggles with copy and paste. Yet, it still allows the motivated to Google around and do things like change a single file in a theme's assets folder to make your panel transparent, something I actually did back in college when I cared more about things like themes.

[1] Note that I'm talking purely about the OS itself as an illustrative example of my point: having to be careful and buy a computer without hardware compatibility issues is a separate issue and is an actual pain in the ass that very reasonably prevents many people from following my example and switching their family to Linux. I just did it because installing Linux once every few years was a hell of a lot less work for me than debugging Windows over the phone once a week.

Agree entirely! It isn't the simplified UI itself that I lament, it's the removal of advanced possibilities. In a lot of cases, the fix is easy- just add an "Advanced" button with options for the power users

Nobody makes products to do stuff except maybe people working on open source or so on. Products are made to sell, their functionality is incidental, for as much as possible to as many people as possible. If power users are too narrow to out buy uneducated end users, which they are, there is nothing to be done. Why would there be any reversal of this?