for nearly no cost

Big players like OpenAI lose money on every non-paying user. They can do this because they expect to be the one who takes it all in the end. But this will not last. There will be a day the remaining companies will stop giving out freebies and the wide arrange of options we have now will shrink and the remaining options will enshittify. If their costs rise, their prices will increase and they might find themselves in a position not making any money anymore.

if someone can pump out near infinite trash for nearly no cost and earn 1% of what they’d earn by actually doing real work, they’ll continue to flood the market because it is economically viable, unfortunately

True, it's a similar reason why spam, phishing, and various internet scams exist. Only a very small portion of what they put out generates any money, but it's enough to keep them going and presumably more than what they think they'd earn doing real work.