Apple selling you mid-range-3-year-old-intel CPUs (that are known to thermal throttle quite badly) at 50% markup, then robbing you slightly less hard on a product is not jaw dropping, it's merely you falling for their marketing three times in a row.

I'm not sure where you're getting that from...

The i9-9980HK (released April 2019) in the 16" 2019 Macbook Pro looks like the highest-end mobile i9 Intel had released as of November 2019 when the laptop launched.

And the i7-9750H in the base model was also launched in April of that year, and looks like it was their 2nd-fastest mobile hexacore i7 at the time?

The MacBook Air line seems to be the only viable alternative for fanless notebooks at the moment, though.

Out of curiosity which laptop should I be looking at if I dont want to be robbed by the apple on a M1?

I just got a Lenovo Blue Phantom w/ Ryzen 5800H and 3050TI for 999 USD. 3.2ghz 8c/16t Ryzen 3. Feels amazing even with Win11 on it and I am going from a Dell G3 i5 9300H with 1660TI QMax and its a very tangible feeling upgrade. (even if the OS is a downgrade lol). I did have to do 40 USD memory upgrade to get it to 16g Dual channel so 1039 USD + tax so there is a hidden extra cost there. Or you could do a 32gb upgrade kit instead and sell your 8gb stick.

I don't think the GPU is much of an upgrade, but it does have tensor cores, the better video encoder (could be an OBS monster) and I believe better thermals. I am sure putting Pop!_OS or Manjaro on it would make this a great *nix platform for developers, content creators or streamers.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the screen is not nearly as good,1080p vs 3K, worse color spectrum, worse contrast. The fan noise is typical of gaming laptop while under load although M1 pro stays mostly inaudible. I haven't checked but I doubt the battery life can be compared as well.

If portability/battery longevity and a high resolution is what you are after, there is always going to be a tradeoff. The monitor on my new laptop is 165hz IPS sRGB and I couldn't care less about build in monitor only doing 1080p vs Retina/4k. But I am willing to get more of what is more important to me vs what apple offers. If I get an M1 it will be a Mini, not a laptop. And if I need 4k I just output to an external monitor in docked mode anyways.

Trying to find a cheaper apple quality device that is as good... you'll really be limited to the cheaper Yoga 4k screen models and their ilk. But I have no experience with those devices.

Any Ryzen one

I definately have to pay more for a similar to a maxxed out Macbook Pro 14" specced Ryzen driven Laptop in Germany. Due to current graphic card prizes Desktop is even worse. Can't say that I feel robbed buying a MBPro when Linux runs on it while I felt that immedeately buying a Tigerlake Notebook.

"Linux runs on it" ?

Yeah tried that, nup.