There are articles that have changed my outlook and life so much that months, years, decades later I would value them in the thousands.

Did you go on to write checks in the thousands to the writers or publications that produced them?

They didn't change most people's life, though, and/or most people's lives were changed by other articles. Publishers cannot meaningfully price-discriminate on this basis. The closest version is republishing a longer version as a book.

So, consumers are left with some amount of surplus. The horror.