For some context, wikipedia has a good table and diagram of codecs that do well at low bitrates, many of which are very old (G.722 from the late 1988, Speex from 2003, Opus from 2012 for a few examples)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_coding_for...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)#Quality_co...

I have no problems with Opus or mp3 at low bitrate, in the same way I have no problems with microwaved food. I just think it's crazy that no one is doing 4Mbps audio while we're routinely streaming 20Mbps video as cheap distractions.

4Mbps audio doesn't really make sense when you can just about perfectly replicate any human-audible sound in ~1.4Mbps

EDIT: I do agree that lossless (or at least high bitrate modern lossy, like 256k Opus which is basically transparent) should be available in many more situations though.