Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers".
I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device that might, at the whim of the manufacturer, decide that the way I'm using it is not okay anymore, is probably designed to break after two years, requires me to sign up for a subscription service for ink, or whatever BS else the decision makers in this space come up with.
Ink jet? Nope, those starter packs are only enough to get you hooked on expensive replacements.
Laser is more expensive, but is the only way to go for rare printing.