You're not wrong (but I dispute the fairy tale characterization you attributed to my comment).

Everyone's life priorities and capabilities are different. Occasionally over the years I have had enough disposable income and free time to work on a passion project. Since the latest inflation wave that has gone away sadly, but before that I was able to commit a few hundred a month.

Eventually, one did get a large amount of traffic, and a handful of volunteers forming a team. While it wasn't something I could monetize, it did contribute to successful job interviews, and a temp gig working for someone who was a user of the project and gave me priority over other candidates due to seen first-hand that I was fixing things when they needed to be fixed.

Keeping the costs low can be done, some are better than others at it. Low-cost IT infrastructure still exists, even in this economy. You should go into such a project expecting to not outgrow your cheap infrastructure unless you are in fact turning it into a business. Otherwise it is wasted effort (and money).

I'm with you that it's possible for some, just like the money drain "Blue Origin" is possible for JB.

But hardly everyone can afford to lose money like that.

Besides, it's not really possible to keep the costs low if you take into account the opportunity costs involved. Therefore it's not rational to expect that from others however I agree that it would be nice if those who can would just do.