Before the internet became the standard for booking travel, travel agents were often used to book flights. They could persuade people to spend just a bit more (around $10-$20) to fly on airlines with better food and more space. It worked!
As soon as sorting by price became the standard it became a race to the bottom. Airlines are only responding to market demand. The fact is everyone want's a premium experience but when it comes time to pay they only want the absolute cheapest fare. The travel aspect of a trip is now considered a tolerated annoyance instead of part of the overall experience. The same thing is happening with hotels as they eliminate services to offer cheaper rooms with nothing else.
Do you value quality of quantity you need to ask yourself. Is it better to have fewer long trips or frequent short trips you need to ask yourself.
Basically the market for airline flights is not a well functioning transparent market, so you cannot say "aha, the consumer preference is obviously the cheapest ticket at all costs".
Personally I would happily pay a little more for more legroom, but have found no good reliable way to find those tickets.
It's all relative. Suppose the cheapest flights were twice what they currently are. Let's say $350 transatlantic one way, or $2300 return on your flight from South Africa to the eastern US. Flights would still be affordable to the middle class, which despite your "peasants" wording actually makes up ~100% of cost-conscious flyers. We'd fly less often and complain - as we do now - that flying would be so much better if we had twice the space per person for the same price and spent some of that on gyms, creches and hot bunks.
But actually we live in that counterfactual! And it turns out we don't really want those amenities. Our collective expressed preference - and given the lack of variety across airlines, it must be almost unanimous - is to be squeezed tighter and get to fly intercontinental a bit more often.