> In the end, steno itself is probably not a lot harder to learn than QWERTY (although I think more frustrating because the "hunt and peck" option for steno is less intuitive and often slower). But it requires sort of a "supporting ecosystem" of skills and tools that is more complex and not amenable to use cases other than natural language. That makes it much less attractive for general use.

100% agree, also it may be harder because in the US we still don't teach kids how to fucking read correctly. It's still common to have elementary school curricula that do not teach how letters are related to phonemes _at all_.