This.

I get (sometimes) frustrated with people that don't work in the tech industry over this concept, and having them rationalize that their usage is heavily subsidized by the distributor of the model.

The costs in compute, electricity, cooling, etc. per token is much higher than most people (I feel) who work in the industry realize. Which, cognitively makes sense: they just want the 'magic 8-ball' to give them a tasty dinner recipe that meets their specifications, for example, and don't care how the 'sausage' is made.

However, economies generally equalize with supply and demand, and this (most likely) will become cheaper as the technology progresses and optimization passes/new algorithms are discovered.