Harnesses are simple (kind of? Some certainly aren't, but I'd agree that they can be simple) but they deliver a ton of value. They have a significant ROI.
I agree that good models have more value because a harness can't magically make a bad model good, but there's a lot that would be inordinately difficult without a proper harness.
Keeping models on rails is still important, if not essential. Great models might behave similarly in the same harness, but I suppose the value prop is that they wouldn't behave as well on the same task without a good harness.
Sure... A good harness can be built in 1 day tho. A good model is 1000x more sophisticated