Arts and Humanities are fine....as pursuits of the leisure class who don't need to make living from them, or for people who work for a living to enjoy as hobbies.

Everyone is free to enjoy arts and humanities, but it's cruel to encourage expectations of gainful employment and silly to expect to
make a living from them. Confusing jobs and careers with hobbies can be financially deadly, so I didn't.

Careers fund hobbies so you can enjoy both. For example I can afford to collect and restore classic motorcycles because I did not try to make it a business. In consequence I easily afforded a well equipped personal workshop instead of starving for years to establish a financially vulnerable business. Fixing fighters paid much better.

The more computers can replace humans the more they will replace humans.

The ideal business has no workers. Humans are expensive, unreliable, easily corrupted, lie, cheat and steal and are frequently incompetent.

It's silly to trust other nations with one's data because the nation one made friendly arrangements with can replace the administration you trusted and purge its appointees.

Europe should not want any but FOSS because proprietary software only belongs to its creator. To use it is submission to its owners. The cost to European governments to code any software required is a trifle compared to relying on the kindness of their enemies.

No non-corrupt reasons exist to want the shackles of proprietary software. That's like wanting proprietary speech.

When prices change, evaluate priorities.

If a tool costs a thousand dollars but will generate sufficient profit or save time or add convenience to justify the expense, I'd buy the tool. A thousand bucks is quite affordable for many skilled trades machine budgets. Tradespeople are normal people too.

If a thousand bucks is not affordable, choose different parts accordingly, for example using multiple smaller and/or different storage drives.

If a toy costs a thousand dollars and that is too expensive, choose a different toy or save up for one you prefer. It's easy to not buy new hardware which doesn't make one money.

If buying the entire machine at once is unaffordable, buy parts gradually.
If a used machine solves one's problem for less money, buy proven used PCs.

If the workstation's purpose is your job it may be worth upgrading. That's easily measured with money.

If it's solely a toy, decide how much fun you can effortlessly afford.
Non-bleeding edge PCs still do what they were bought to do.

There are many ways to enjoy computers. Home lab enthusiasts assign roles to their computers to conveniently offload tasks and if so inclined run a variety of OS. Retro gamers often have multiple PCs to suit their OS and software of choice.

Users with leftover RAM modules have ways to use them including used server boards which are plentiful and cheap in complete systems. Not requiring some "ideal" PC is liberating.

The cost-effective way to use ewaste is mixing it with other ewaste which has become quite popular, "home lab" enthusiasts being common examples. Another way is using multiple SFF and tiny PCs so each machine can be optimized by the owner. They don't use many modules, but 8 or 16GB can be useful if loads are reasonably limited.