Tailwind Labs relied on a weird monetization scheme. Revenue was proportional to the pain of using the framework. The sudden improvement in getting desired UI without relying on pre-built templates killed Tailwind Labs.

There are many initiatives in a similar spot, improving your experience at using Next.js would hurt Vercel. Making GitHub actions runners more reliable, stable and economical would hurt Microsoft. Improving accessibility to compute power would hurt Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Improving control and freedom over your device would hurt apple and Google.

Why should we be sympathetic to the middleman again?

If suddenly CSS became pleasant to use, Tailwind would be in a rough spot. See the irony?

"Give everything away for free and this people will leave technology", geohot said something like this and I truly appreciate. Technology will heal finally