Usain Bolt's top speed is about 44.72 km/h. My top speed sprinting is about 25 km/h. That's at least 50% as good. But I'd have a hard time getting paid even half as much as Mr Bolt.
Yeah, but you'd both be quite suitable to go walk to the grocery store.
Sure, but that would be a waste of Mr Bolt's capability for locomotion.
Even someone with marginally less top speed isn’t getting paid half as much as Usain Bolt. Athletes aren’t getting paid per unit of output. This analogy is not analogising.
No, no, you understood it exactly right: someone who's 99% as fast as Usain Bolt doesn't get 99% as much attention and money either.
Which doesn’t even slightly apply to what you’re drawing the analogy against. Your attempted analogy is invalid.
OK but what if, staying in that analogy, you just have to wait 6-12 months to become as fast as Usain is right now?
In this analogy Usain Bolt will get twice as fast too, right? Using a solution that is always twice weaker than SotA, would put a company (or a national olympic team) at a significant disadvantage to competitors which do use the SotA.