While I agree the prices are absurd I don't think the lower capacity thing helps anymore. It used to be a lot cheaper because there were like manufacturing issues with packing more space onto an ssd but the main thing pushing prices up now is that the NAND chips are competeing with the AI hardware for space on the assembly line. So the companies still making consumer NAND are going to prioritize the higher capacity more expensive and higher margin products. I'd guess lower capacity stuff just doesn't exist in the volume needed at all. I wouldn't be surprised if soon the lowest you can find for an SSD is 1TB and its expensive as fuck. The AI companies really are just decimating global production of every computer component. I hope China comes in and steals the market from them while they're neglecting it.