To my understanding, it's because individual nodes would be four times harder to establish and maintain, which lends to centralization and inevitably, censorship and control.
But I'm a pleb so don't ask me about the nuances there.
Discussion
Bitcoin kept the small block size so people could run their own nodes at home. But this isn't happening. People are using custodial solutions. Even I use Wallet of Satoshi and Minibits.
Small blocks opened the door to solutions like Cashu. Imagine a government with a centralized mint. El Salvador (Bitcoin country!) has a custodial Lightning wallet. This is just terrible.
Small blocks are the censorship factor here.
I run core for node and cold wallet so I wouldn't say that's true across the board but I smell what you're stepping in. The fact is the majority of people aren't tech savvy. Hell I still don't know exactly how to connect my node to my wallet UI. Lacking education and ambition seem like bigger hurtles than the block size to me.