I wanted to reply that snapraid or the equivalent will lead to less wear and tear, and provide reasonable redundancy that you can trigger as needed. It’s also a lower electricity bill and allows mismatched drive sizes.
It’s also arguably easier to recover data on failures.
Can’t help with the drive costs unfortunately.
I believe lots of what you witness as illogical and harmful in society comes from social proof and the implications of breaking with the ingroup especially as people age and have built their life on lies that would outcast them to go against.
As people get older and have defended the bad stances they grow more threatened and hostile to any percieved challenges that threaten to erase both who they are and their community.