It depends. It is enough to turn yourself into an experienced software developer, then you can get a job and afford the annual developer fee. But it sort of sucks if you are, say, retired and don't keep up your identity but would like to keep your apps.

I don't understand what risk they are mitigating by keeping the unverified developers to 3 days instead of one year. It is clearly an intentional action.

I guess you could have a business where you install unapprovable apps for people with a 1 year subscription and they have to physically come back to your kiosk and get an update from you each year.