Good professional audio hardware is not overpriced. Sure, there are $15k microphones but you absolutely do not need those, a $1k one is top quality and not expensive if you use it regularly.

You are confusing it with audiophile gear.

Regarding Audacity, it's missing tons of features and it's UI is bad. Just like Gimp vs Photoshop. I did some audio production and Audacity is just not usable beyond the most basic operations, and even those are a bit of pain.

Ableton Live Suite costs 750 USD? Not much for a lifetime license of something that you would use on every project. Plus there's the ability to collaborate with other professionals that depends on the Ableton project file format.

Edit: Mind you, it contains software instruments, sound packs and MIDI effects allowing you to add synthesized music to recorded music. Audacity only manipulates existing audio and you will need to bring in other software if you want to add synthesised audio which in Audacity will just be treated as extra audio tracks rather than MIDI. That will obviously make it more difficult to produce music. It would be like having to rasterise every layer instead of using a vector graphics to build an illustration.

Yes. I'm seasoned enough and do the work often enough to be discerning about my choice of tools. An amateur cook might not worry about their choice of chef's knife, but someone doing the work every day is going to make the investment in tools that enable them to express themselves at their full potential, and with minimal resistance. These tools may sometimes appear overpriced to outsiders, but for a regular user it makes a big difference and is worth the investment.

I've also been around the block long enough to know what tools are worth investing in and which to avoid, so I'm not worried about vendors with bad value add.

The "Mixdown Industrial Complex" that provokes gear lust in audio professionals is not something I worry about at this point. I'm mostly satisfied on the tools that I use and the shiny new thing doesn't interest me like it once did. The focus now is on the work.