We won't ever be free until we can compete with chipmakers ourselves. We can make free software at home but making computer hardware requires billions. Maybe one day it will be possible to manufacture chips at home.
I understand your position. If enough people think different from you, we will still be able to buy devices with "real freedom". If too many people agree with you, we run the risk of having zero devices that respects our freedom.
Right now, if you want a ryf-certified device, you have to choose a very old device (x86) or pay a lot of money for a very powerful one (POWER9). If enough people join the cause, we may, in the future, get affordable freedom respecting devices.
Moore's law has pretty much flattened out since around the early 2010s. Most new laptops for sale these days are Core i5 ~2.5 GHz with 4-8 GB RAM and 'HD' integrated graphics just like they were 10 years ago.
Intel has flattened out is probably more accurate.
Processor speed improvements have indeed not kept pace in desktop / high TDP offerings.
A lot has however happened in the lower power chips used in laptops/mobiles in the last 10 years.
Apple silicon or most ARM type SoC chips of today are so much much better than anything from late 2010s in performance at that power draw.
This has also coincided with decreasing desktop demand as more people use phones or laptops as their primary or only device.
I don't have enough know-how to state with certainty that it is the just the market movement with more R&D money in lower power processors or if there are hard tech limits but certainly is a factor
My $600 laptop's cpu performance is about double that of the x200. I'm not sure about transistor number, but the performance increase is huge. I upgraded from a Thinkpad T410 this year, using a T60 until 2019. I can't go back.
