Do you expect the homeowner that needs to mow their lawn to build their own lawnmower? How about the "tech savvy" homeowner that wants an automated lawnmower? Should they be derided for buying one of the robot mowers instead of building their own? Should the person that needs a hammer and nails to build a raised bed for their gardening hobby be required to make the hammer or the nails, in the name of "learning something new/valuable"?

It comes down to the fact that these things are tools. Now that reasonably affordable "turnkey" or "off the shelf" options are available, what you're really seeing is the divide between those wanting building the tool itself as their hobby, and those that just want a tool to use on their other hobbies. There was less of a divide previously because for most people, the "just buy one" option simply didn't exist. Now it does.

I spent a lot of time over the years wire-wrapping circuits, then manually laying out and etching/making circuit boards, then using software to do the layouts while still etching/drilling boards myself, then learning and switching the bulk of my projects to surface-mount. It was a necessary part of making electronic bits for stuff I wanted, but I didn't enjoy that part. Now that I can draw something up, send it off and for a few bucks have professionally manufactured multi-layer boards in days/weeks, with many/most components already placed and soldered, why wouldn't I cut out the part I don't enjoy?

I played with 3d printers off and on from about 2006 onwards, though I never kept one around for any real length of time. I found that while I really wanted the capabilities, I didn't want "building and keeping a 3d printer running" to be my hobby. 20 years later, there are options that don't require printer maintenance to be it's own hobby, and I'm much more willing to keep one around.

I've had a couple Chinese-made mini-mills since 2002 -- Sieg X2s, if I remember the old naming scheme correctly, though they were sold by various importers with their own names/model numbers. I converted one to CNC operation in 2004. While I appreciate the work done by others that I could learn from, I did not enjoy the process or the project. If there had been a reasonably affordable "turnkey" option with the capabilities I wanted, I would have 100% taken it. If I needed another one now, with the options available, there's no way I'd bother to build my own. Even then, I would have gone with sherline's early cnc offerings -- they fit my budget, but were just too small for what I wanted to do.

My first CNC router was scratch-built in the early 2000s. My current one came in a crate 4 years ago, and cost about half of what building a new one with the same capabilities from scratch would have. Instead of spending a several months' worth of weekends building it, I spent one weekend unpacking it and setting it up, another fine-tuning it and the software settings, and then was able to start using it for projects I enjoyed.

The ability for people to make things at home is expanding, just not in the way you'd like to see. That isn't a bad thing.

At the end of the day, time is what is ultimately valuable, and I don't have nearly as much of it as I did when I was younger. At this point, I'd much rather spend what time I do have enjoying my hobbies and creating the things I want to create, not building tools or suffering through tasks I hate simply because someone else thinks that is the important part. It seems I'm not the only one.

As for companies that "care" disappearing, well, that's just the current business environment. When the only measure of success that's deemed important is the stock value -- or potential stock value, in the case of startups -- customer service is an expense that can be cut to inflate next months' quarterly report. In exchange, the concept of customer loyalty is dying as well.