I don't know why you're snarking so hard when there are dozens of managed Kubernetes offerings out there.
> It requires a lot of hardware just for the base, 9 servers minimum.
An HA deployment requires 3 nodes for the control plane, and as many or few workers as necessary. But yes, this is 3 more nodes than you would run without automated orchestration. Of course, the cost of these 3 nodes is amortized over all of the worker nodes, so if you're only running 3 worker nodes you're paying 100% for orchestration, but if you're running 30 worker nodes you're only paying 10% (this is assuming equally sized nodes, for simplicity).
> The more complex something gets the harder it is to get done right.
Right, but if someone else packages that complexity up for you in a piece of software (like Kubernetes or Linux) it's often much easier to get it done right than it would be to roll your own from primitives.
You also don't need an angle grinder to open a cardboard box, but that doesn't mean angle grinders are stupid and can all be replaced with a box cutter.
And not just that, it's expensive. It requires a lot of hardware just for the base, 9 servers minimum.
The more complex something gets the harder it is to get done right.
I would downvote you if I could because what you wrote is just ignorant and anyone who dealt with k8s before can tell that you never dealt with it.