When we go with any other good in the economy, price is always relevant: After all, the price is a key part of any offering. There are $80-100k workstations out there, but most of us don't buy them, because the extra capabilities just aren't worth it vs, say a $3000 computer, and or even a $500 one. Do I need a top specialist to consult for a stomachache, at $1000 a visit? Definitely not at first.
There's a practical difference to how much better certain kinds of results can be. We already see coding harnesses offloading simple things to simpler models because they are accurate enough. Other things dropped straight to normal programs, because they are that much more efficient than letting the LLM do all the things.
There will always be problems where money is basically irrelevant, and a model that costs tens of thousand dollars of compute per answer is seen as a great investment, but as long as there's a big price difference, in most questions, price and time to results are key features that cannot be ignored.
