A one-off software license (or even a subscription) is completely different. The issue is metered billing for something you are paying for already which costs the company nothing. The equivalent is not only paying a flat monthly fee to Adobe for access to Photoshop, but also an additional charge for how long you have it open on your machine every month.

I’d like to introduce you to Oracle and many software companies pre-SaaS that were charging per core.

If I recall correctly, Atlassian’s CI product also charged you for parallel jobs back in the day. And businesses were paying it because they felt it gave them value for money.