I get its to regulate mining.   Im just pointing out the treadmill effect, you know what Im talking about.    All that technology and energy and like the OP says, it could just be done by one person.  (however that aint much of a network or with redundancy)

I thought someone might summarise why high difficulty improves the product not just prevents abuse.   All these posts and I still dont know everything or least Im checking

Faster blocks improve transaction and confirmation speeds.   If there was no block reward, would that unrestricted process be ok or is a good blockchain still requiring higher diff; to stop forks perhaps