We have programming languages because people make them. The only way to have only 3 or 4 is to eradicate all but those and stop people from making more. However if we did that, I have a feeling we would now choose 1 or 2 that wouldn't exist if someone had done the same thing a decade ago.

A professor of mine once quipped: "What's the definition of a 'gentleman computer scientist?' Someone who knows how to make a their own computer language, but doesn't."

What about someone who knows how to get people on eLance to bid to make them for $1,000, no matter how impossible, but doesn't?

If you strip down a language so far that there's not much to it at all, then $1000 for a new language isn't so far fetched. Just don't ask for support for libraries, a JIT VM, etc. Then again, you could implement it on top of a pre-existing VM, and get access to libraries.

What about a minimalist subset of Python with curly braces instead of indenting? I think I'd actually like that language. Add an easy mapping to Python libraries, and you're done. $1000 is still a bit on the low end for that, but $3000 would seem quite reasonable.