This is unthinking and uses fallacy of edge cases. Brain transplants. Reality is generally a core of you remains. Yes some people completely change. But that is an edge case. This tries to be profound, but ain’t.
I have no problem paying for software. The problem is most software is total crap these days. And I refuse to pay subscriptions. There are great examples of stuff I'm HAPPY to pay for. iStat menus, KeyboardMaestro (and I used to love 1password before they went subscription).