BTW, having only ever used thinkpads with disabled trackpads (I agree they suck on thinkpads), how do people not touch these with their palms all the time by accident?

The problem is that it's more lucrative to manipulate people to buy things they don't need or to trick them to pay more. Note that there are industries where marketing costs are outrageously high, sometimes higher than production and/or R&D. A company that doesn't spend the same amount on marketing or lobbying might make less profit (e.g. due to network effects, other scaling effects, special protections or subsidies) and thus seem like a bad investment.

This leads to a sort of arms race: everybody needs to hire more and more marketers, patent lawyers, etc. and donate more to political campaigns.

Solution: Heavily regulate advertising and lobbying. Some kinds of advertising could just be outlawed, and the rest could get (time or space) limits. Anonymous electronic cash would also help to make internet publications independent from corporate advertising money. Tax money could be used to support independent institutes or publications that try to spread actually helpful consumer advise.

I think some winner-take-all mechanics might also be at play on a personal career level. Note that there are actually lots of people with nothing but free time, though usually not by choice. Many governments deny those people a decent standard of living (some even a home, food or medical care), forcing them take shitty, low-paying, insecure jobs. The constant threat of losing your income to someone else who will work harder or for less money kind of naturally creates a situation where you either work long hours or not at all.

Also, I'd say, if your software needs lots of modified dependencies, you're not communicating with those projects properly.

If every single project were to fork every one of their dependencies, the result would be maintenance nightmare.