more people need to self-host, or at the very least we need more mon-and-pop style datacenters.

most would rather offload hardware costs and, more importantly, security, to those more knowledgeable.

running one’s own hardware is extremely time intensive, nevermind power and equipment costs

These three points that you’ve made are NOT accurate. I could go into great detail as to why this is but I won’t waste our time nor embarrass you.

The problem, unfortunately, always comes down to money.

This isn’t a technological problem.

All of the popular widely used corporate platforms gain more users because they have the money in which to market/advertise themselves.