You're not the average person. You probably also don't have significant credit card debt or rely on buy-now-pay-later for making purchases. Subscriptions are a win-win for the average company and user - users pay less upfront when evaluating the product, and companies can rely on a steady cash flow to continue paying for development and ongoing maintenance costs.

It's not a win for the user. The user is tricked into paying more than a fair price by deceptive business practices. The word for that is fraud, but somehow it's OK because everyone does it.

> paying more than a fair price by deceptive business practices

I see product X is $10/month. I subscribe. I'm not sure where the deception is there? The alternative is likely either the cost of the product is exorbitantly high like $500 for lifetime. Or the developer makes it more affordable but sales peter out and they end up having to go out of business and can't afford to maintain the product after a couple of years. Likely both. And hackernews will complain either way.

The only sustainable model I've seen is lifetime licenses but updates for a single year.

Every time I looked at customer spending graphs at my previous jobs, I realized how my habits have nothing in common with an average consumer. We’re extreme minority in most of the cases.