Your point is a complete non-sequitar though? How'd it go from "Patrick is very active on HN/with developer communication!" to "yeah but Stripe is expensive"?

AFAIK they see themselves as a "premium" processor, not as a cheap one.

just a reference to the company’s valuation - and how lack of regulation around interchange fees and payment processing fees has meant very high costs that would be a lot lower if the US were more like EU

I don't see how that's a problem? There's no lack of payment processors, as you have noted, many with lower fees.

If you choose Stripe, you're doing so for the dev experience, their ML whatever, better testing suite, integrations, etc.

And you're doing that consciously.

there’s a high floor due to interchange fees that are set by the networks that processors have no control over.