Why are lands so unreasonably expensive?

{"ops":[{"insert":"Fetches are in high demand as the best color fixing in Modern. Commander pushes prices up too, even though fetch effectiveness is diminished by deck size and singleton restriction.\n\nI assume you're building a Commander deck if you're running 38 lands. Link your deck; I'd be happy to talk about this in more detail.\n\nIf you're just ranting, I feel you. Lands are the most essential card type every format needs, and the expense of mana bases prices out players. WotC should be flooding the secondary market with reprints of good lands.\n"}]}

{"ops":[{"insert":"They're deceptively very good. Just proxy\n"}]}

{"ops":[{"insert":"lands are used in literally every deck so good ones will always be expensive. you can always use tapped lands instead if you need to keep the ratio the same and just use something like dryad of the illysian grove if you need a specific land type for an effect to trigger\n"}]}

{"ops":[{"insert":"They are expensive because, unlike many format specific staples we have in commander, they are almost without exception rares and mythics (so low supply) that gets used in multiple formats, and more to the point, in 4-of formats.\n\nAs for how to sort out your color fixing on a budget, let me put forward a card cycle: Panoramas.\nThese are vastly superior to the usual Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse, in my opinion, as they can tap for mana on their own. So in the early game, if you need them, you can spend a mana to colorfix (usually not that impactful to be a turn behind the curve in the first few turns) and once your color fixing is done, you can just play them as a colorless land to pay for generic costs. I usually play Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds as well if I feel like I need even more fixing, but the Panoramas definitely comes first in my brewing these days.\n\nSo, for any given 3 color deck, you have at least 3-4 Panoramas, plus Promising Vein, Shire Terrace and Ash Barrens to help you with your color fixing at minimal cost to your tempo.\n\nIf you're in white, on top of lands, there are a bunch of cheap creatures that fetches Plains (not just basic ones) which is amazing in combination with the slew of tapped duals with basic land types on them that we now have.\n\nIn my most budget three color decks (15-20 dollars in total), the mana base usually costs less than 2 dollars, and these are not bad decks by any stretch. They can hang at most tables save for the really high powered tables and cEDH tables, making them ideal to bring to any LGS commander night. And because of the budget, you don't run a lot of classic, salty staples, meaning you won't get as many sharp side-eyes when you're playing either, so it's a win-win-win! :)\n"}]}