Looking at it a different way, IPv4 addresses are scarce so it makes more economic sense to have fewer, central owners that can maximize usage, rather than millions of individuals owners, many or most of which would not necessarily be using them at any given time.

Putting a price on IP address usage again is a mechanism to prevent squatting/hoarding a scarce resource.

But if you don’t want to “rent” IP addresses from anyone, you can still find blocks for sale. Last time I checked (last year) class C blocks were going for $15k-$20k.