I am entirely convinced that absent LEO comsat constellations, people who espouse this sentiment would likely be whining about "useless astronomy taking money away from helping poor people".

If you genuinely care about the field of astronomy, rest assured that the same falling launch costs that have enabled LEO comsat constellations, will enable the launch of fleets of space-based telescopes.

this is such a weird talking about that basically any real astronomer doesn't really care about, at all. it just comes across as "let's find any way to criticize elon possible" or "let's write clickbait based on a couple of terminally online comments on twitter". satellites are not blocking views, and astronomers are overwhelmingly in support of a healthy space industry, which includes satellite launches. the cutting edge of astronomy relies on satellites, it would be weird to be against them

Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing.

In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.