You can allow people to contact an owner without giving out their information. Craigslist does it.
The question comes down to: is owning a domain like owning a computer (a commodity)? Or is owning a domain more akin to owning a phone (landline), or real estate, or a business?
If the former, privacy should generally be assumed by default. If the latter, I think it's worth questioning whether it should be.
To your point, the price doesn't escalate to $250/yr. It escalates to $10/year plus ~$2-5/yr for privacy protection. That's what we've been talking about this whole time - SHOULD you have to pay a premium for an "unlisted number"?
Luckily for those concerned with privacy, companies like Namecheap, Google, Namesilo, and a few others are now offering this by default, making that discussion irrelevant.
No. Google Voice numbers are free, I use one as the throwaway phone number for my personal domains.