I'm going to suggest what's going on here is Hanlon's Razor for models: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a model's stupidity."

In my opinion, we've reached some ceiling where more tokens lead only to incremental improvements. A conspiracy seems unlikely given all providers are still competing for customers and a 50% token drives infra costs up dramatically too.

Never attribute to incompetence what is sufficiently explained by greed.