They’re outright accepting less customers in favor of those willing to pay higher prices.

This is exactly it. I have seen folks saying we are entering a new kind of economy: a kind of “whale economy”. After seeing it work for mobile apps and games, other normal companies are wising up to the fact that your revenue will be the same if you charge 10 times what you were and lose 9/10 of your customers as a result… but your expenses will be lower. less labor, less equipment, less materials, less time. The 1/10 who stay and pay the high prices out themselves as “whales”, the people who probably have enough money to never care and will probably just keep spending even if the prices keep going up and up and up.

The majority of us are about to become low value customers… and therefore, not have easy access to common goods and services any longer. This will make perfect short term sense to each company doing this, but will promptly collapse what’s left of our economy into ruin.