Because you're the one dismissing user serviceability as an impeding factor to reducing the overall package size?
>And "acceptable compromise" -- acceptable to who?
To me, and anyone else who shares my values.
>Because the current compromise is acceptable to people who buy these laptops with soldered-on RAM.
Seems like you can layer-on any argument you want simply by citing sales. I suppose people think Windows security is the best since they overwhelmingly choose to buy Windows machines over Apple or Linux desktops. But that is a false statement, because not everyone is aware of the intricacies of operating system design or that different options exist, or how they differ etc etc. Extrapolating _just_ from commercial success to use as data in an argument is a fools errand because of the thousands of variables involved in a large diverse group making a purchasing decision.
>Sure, okay, but history is rife with examples of people telling markets to do things better and things not getting better,
Hmm I'm curious.. can you provide a sampling of those incidents that apply to our discussion here?
>and it's helpful to think about why markets haven't gotten to better on their own.
They almost never do. Systems typically evolve to coalesce around a local maxima. All around the world (in democracies anyway), citizens have always installed regulations to make the market serve us, rather than the other way around. For e.g. in the US - child labor, minimum wage, consumer product safety, etc, antitrust laws, etc etc. Before each of those laws got passed, I'm sure people made arguments against it with "well the market has accepted it". (You seem like a decent bloke, so I'm not suggesting that you personally would be against those regulations, just making a general point)
