Those business owners are also being exploited by larger businesses. They're also accustomed to a certain slice of pie and hate accepting it diminish.

As a self-employed developer, I've had the same discussion with people that hire me and want to change my rate, "My rate is set by the market and I'm not willing to undercut the people behind me. If I were to set my rate, it would be greater and not less. Hire someone that takes less and best of luck to you, I might not be the right fit."

I'm all for growing the pie instead of changing the slices but that's a concern of things many orders of magnitude beyond myself. I thought rising interest rates might be good for the industry but it turns out the industry is pretty clueless and they don't actually seem to know what they're keeping and what they've dropped, accordingly some people that seem like dead weight technologically are basically untouchable to the people that make the budgets and decisions.

Things have been divorced from economic realism for so long, I'm not sure we can even reach the bottom before we run out of breath.