I can appreciate that. Is there any merit in my sentiment? Or is it wholly misguided and oversimplified?

Relays should be simpler to run independently of the issue at hands but with aligned incentives, relay runners wouldn't worry about @Hodl Hodl straining their relay. They would celebrate success, brag about nostr going exponential and get others to figure out how to get a piece of the relay pie aka how to drive down relay prices.

I suspect, @Hodl Hodl would happily eat a monthly server cost of $100 but right now, relays can't deal with this demand. You'd have to negotiate something to not get blocked as spam on a case by case basis. So why doe HH not run their own relay? I guess because they bought into the nostr narrative of not needing to do so and because they don't want to be in a position to censor users.