This was not my experience with ARIN at all. I requested resources as an individual (sole proprietor) and they were issued to me under my own name. The only requirement is that you have a justified use and $250 per year, which is the cost for 3X-Small allocation (/40 or less of IPv6, /24 of IPv4). As of this year it is also $50 to have an "org" created. This is not prohibitively difficult, though it might be prohibitively expensive for some.
Last I looked, ARIN charged $550 (one time fee) to issue an ASN, on top of the recurring fee. Not expensive if you're serious, but if you're a hobbyist and just need a 32-bit ASN number, you may as well explore cheaper alternatives. Based on my own research, that would cover 20+ years of fees for some LIRs in the RIPE region.
An ASN isn't needed unless you are multi-homed. If you're connecting through just one ISP, you can do BGP peering with them using a private ASN. That said, if you do need an ASN, I don't know why they should be so expensive.
Yes, I understand. I set up my first AS in the 90's, back when you were considered a god if you had a T1 line. We had two T1's, one to MCI and another to BBN!
