Although the direct effects are awful it feels like we should surely (in the long term) want services to be sustainable - i.e. the cost of the service to be paid for by its users. Where services are not sustainable (and require donations/grants) this should be explicit and transparent.

Cheap money lasted for such a long time that we're all used to being on economic painkillers 24/7.

Yes, services should be sustainable. That isn't the same thing as enabling them to extract as much money as possible in a short period of time before selling out, which is often the target these days.

Develop a long-term plan that builds a stable business, and keeps both the proprietor and customers happy, and I'm happy to support them.

> we want services to be sustainable - i.e. the cost of the service to be paid for by its users

All of this applies equally to businesses that were sustainable (or on a path to sustainability). The amount of money a business can responsibly spend on loss leaders like a free tier is dependent on growth rate and cost of capital.

Now that cost of capital has gone up and growth has gone down, the amount you can reasonably spend on loss leaders is comparatively tiny.

This does not mean we should expect fundamental changes in most business models going forward. Most startups did not take the Vision Fund approach to their business model that so fundamentally warped a few markets (Uber, WeWork, etc.)

I hope it's not going to be too bad. We'll have some delay, but soon more open source projects should fill the underserved spaces. The generous free plans stopped many interesting projects from being created, but as a side effect that's also going to change.