It's never really been about upfront price so much as longevity. If you can avoid a laptop upgrade e.g. every 5 years by upgrading just a few components instead, it'll last you longer and cost you less longterm.

Fundamentally, the cheapest way to build electronics is with very little modularity. Making parts swappable is more complicated to design and needs more components to be included. Both drive up the cost of the product.

No sweat if it's too expensive or that's not what you care about (ok, though you should sweat not caring about longevity), but making it all about the price is sort of missing the point. Capitalism is a tool for improving our lives but is not the only tool for that.