I have had my fair share of freelance work throughout the years, only two of those were fully dedicating to freelancing.

I worked as a business consultant and cybersecurity auditor, but also did the odd one off kind of jobs of copywriting, blog writing, content creation and so forth, so I can mostly recognize and agree with you on your viewpoints.

But also by the same token, I used and developed by own negotiations to mitigate at least some of the struggle.

Like:

Project-Based Contracts: Shift away from hourly rates toward charging for the entire deliverable, mitigating the "time-is-money" mentality that can undervalue freelancers.

Retainer Models: Businesses commit to a set amount of work per month with a freelancer, providing more stable income.