Exactly. A ticket for a seat on an aircraft has no justification for being more complex or confusing to buy than, say, an apple. It ought to be way less complex than apples, in fact, since they can rot or suffer from poor storage and so on.
It is that simple. Punch in your departure and destination airports, click click click, done.
You want to control every detail of the result while also spending as little money as possible? That takes some effort, with both flights and apples.
Actually, getting the best price for a flight is easier than with apples. I'd have to spend all day calling (or visiting!) stores in my area to see who has the best price for apples, since most stores don't make that information available online in any form. Accomplishing the same for a flight takes literally thirty seconds.
Rather, frequent fliers out of necessity soon learn these things, and start to speak the language(s) that the airlines use instead of language that muggles understand. Even frequent flyers don't always instantly know why I don't fly in row 1, though I do fly first class.
It's easier to know what you're getting when you buy a TV than it is to do so when buying an airline ticket, even if you buy the TV on impulse, and even though TV vendors are looking to extract as much as they can from TV buyers.