I have to laugh at these conspiracy theories.
The real reason is the operating systems no longer come with a BASIC prompt. This is true for Windows, OSX, and that corporate Linux product.
If every operating system, including phones, came with an icon that opened to a BASIC prompt, I bet you'd see an explosion of programming competence especially among young people.
I’ve never used BASIC, but is it really so much more approachable/productive than python? With python’s batteries included philosophy, I’d expect it to be pretty quick for beginners. The only sticking point I can think of is GUIs
> 10 print "Bow before the Mighty Walter, scum!"
> 20 goto 10
> run $ python
>>> while True:
... print("Help, I'm trapped in a loop!")
These days, when someone I know is interested in learning some computer programming, I tell them to get a copy of Introduction to Computer Science Using Python by Dierbach. My own intro programming books are horribly outdated at this point, but I happen to have a copy of Dierbach's book, and I think it is pretty nice. You start up by firing up the Python REPL on your computer, and from there it talks about how computers work.
IMO, this is an easier way to start computer programming than we ever had with BASIC. The barrier to entry is as low as it ever was, the languages are a lot nicer and you can definitely get real work done with Python, and over the years we've gotten more textbooks & better textbooks.
Honestly, the real friction here is that you have to open up a terminal window and type "python". Or if you are interested in JavaScript, you have to press Ctrl+Shift+I or some other combo to bring up a REPL in whatever browser window is already open. It's not friction, it's just a little obfuscation--give someone a computer and they probably won't discover Python or JavaScript just by playing around with it, but if you give someone an Apple II, they're going to run head-first into BASIC.
C:\scan>python
'python' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
C:\scan>
kimsbox:~ $ python3
Python 3.5.3 (default, Sep 27 2018, 17:25:39)
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
I learned BBC BASIC first and it still holds special place in my heart. A lot of the feel of Python is similar (it also has similar goals), but it is quite a bit younger and has a lot more 'batteries included'. So I have to say I do actually prefer python for my day-to-day usage now.
While you technically can write a Python program in Microsoft's terrible terminal window, such a program is a very distant second class citizen in the Windows ecosystem. This adds to the friction the poster above is referring to.
Productive? Not really sure about this. But obviously Python has a nice standard library and package manager which help you install 3rd party libs easily. Not idea which modern BASIC environment which provides that. If you want to handle various networking, GUI, database etc stuffs then probably Python is easier.
Well, there are certainly a lot of closed platforms. But arguably it started a long time ago with games consoles.