You joke but I don't see why mass optimization shouldn't be possible given the cost of mass refactoring went to effectively zero at this point.

This has absolutely been a dream of mine. We act like it's the 80s-90s again and optimize all the software.

That's the one silver lining. I've always kept a lean desktop of mostly terminal based programs, and I've heard one too many times "just buy more RAM" as a defense for resource intensive graphical programs using Electron or modern browsers in general.