Quality is not necessarily more expensive, but it does set a ceiling on scale.

If you look at the cost-per-word to produce the Economist, it likely isn't that different from the cost-per-word of USA Today.

But the quality of the output of the Economist is significantly better than USA Today.

It's tempting to conclude "Wow, quality actually isn't that expensive."

But quality sets a hidden constraint: it's basically impossible to provide at scale.

The structure of The Economist can't produce more than an issue a week.

There's a horizon implied by the constraint of hitting a certain high quality bar.

Beyond that horizon is not blue ocean, but dead ocean.

For whatever reason, quality in that dead ocean is effectively infinitely expensive.

It only looks possible because there are no counter-examples.

But there are no counter-examples because it's not possible.