And you misunderstood me, if you've got a good LAME rip you will not be able to distinguish it from a FLAC rip off the original CD. You'll be using several times the storage for no perceptible improvement. While disk storage is cheap the physical storage of those CDs is not nor is the time required to handle the CDs to rip.
I get what you’re saying, but no one is really arguing that physical storage doesn’t exist as an issue. That being said, CD’s have a pretty small footprint. You can fit several hundred - if not upwards of a thousand - jewel cases + CD’s in a typical book case. As far as hobbies go they’re pretty space-efficient!
Plus the whole point of a physical collection is to have it and to be able to hold it/admire it. Everything takes up space. It’s not purely about the utility of having the music available.
Go tell any music archive to destroy their physical CD’s if they’ve ripped them (or if they have the masters), if you want to see my point. It’s not just about the music onboard.
