In 2015, it was around 40GB. It is now over 300GB. My computer has a hard drive with 500GB. While I would've been happy to download the block in 2015, it is now too big for me. Yes, I could easily fork out another $100 to buy a new hard drive but this is something I wouldn't have needed a few years ago.
Fair point, but there are 2 alternative if you insist to run full node
1.
Use pruned node. Bitcoin Core still download and verify whole blockchain, but only keep few thousand last block.
But it wouldn’t be that beneficial to the network. The blockchain must be made as redundant as possible for the new generation of Bitcoiners. If you have the hardware, store the whole blockchain.
2.
Trust third party which prepare pruned snapshot such as https://github.com/ez-org/eznode.
There are another alternative such as UTXO commitment, but so far there's no interest to implement it on Bitcoin.
ALL users should rather run a pruned node, and validate everything themselves.