I think the main issue here is that Chromebook =/= laptop. They may have the same form factor as a laptop, but a Chromebook is not intending to do the same general purpose computing job a laptop does, so the hardware doesn't matter as much.
And remember I bought that Chromebook for $150 off.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285615350696?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...
So basically, the incentives are lined up differently. I can take a real laptop and install whatever I want on it, but the same is not true for a Chromebook. That is by design because they also don't need to be powerful to run webapps for kids at school.
2. That eliminates the budget-friendly aspect of the Chromebook which schools love.
You are complaining that a product meant for a different purpose and different users doesn't meet your expectations. You are not the target audience for the device.
Then why are they selling it for a price that is so much faster and 3 years older?
You couldn't reliably source enough cheap laptops to endlessly have to work on them to get them provisioned for students while also repairing the 2-3 broken Chromebooks per week because kids are hard on them.
Volume discount Chromebooks are the de facto way schools run because they can basically get them at cost. The only profit is when people pay retail prices, which as you pointed out is not a reasonable price for the pure performance of the hardware. But again, they are really designed for schools by definition so they are very limited and can't do much general computing. As a result they do not need performance parity with anything but ChromeOS and any web apps that might get installed.
The final thing I'd like to point out is that we have been gaining less raw performance in CPUs each year and moving toward better performance per watt instead. Laptops especially don't need huge, hot, power hungry CPUs anymore. So instead of making them faster and faster for minimal end-user benefit they chose to make battery life the priority because that really does give much more benefit to the end user.
Most devices are now aimed at media consumption rather than more power hungry media creation. We've reached "good enough" performance that the N100 can consume YouTube videos and run web apps while still having a battery that lasts all day (or close). That's all schools need for a basic computing device.
You seem like a power user who needs more than a basic computing device. The Chromebook is not designed for your needs :)
Then they should be much much cheaper that a three years old laptop that can do so much more!