You're probably correct in your assumption about people not having the ability and maybe even the inclination to build but the time aspect is definitely invalid because if you can find the forty or so hours to try to piece together assemblies that some third world person built, you can definitely find time to build your own kit. Of course the skills are much more involved when building compared to assembling sections that are already, for the most part, complete. It doesn't take much talent to mix up epoxy, slather it on a dihedral brace and wing halves and stick them together. You could probably teach monkies to do that. The thing is, you have to want to build something that you can say "I built that". Personally I like the historical side of the subjects I build. But for most people today, it's enough to just go throwing your 5 to 15 lb collections of wood, metal and plastic around the sky and when they tire of that, they'll move on to something else that catches their interest for 15 minutes. I can honestly say that I have seen a lot of real modelers try ARFs and most of the time, not always, complain about how poorly it was made. However I can't remember any that started with ARFs and progressed to building kits and continued in the hobby, those that tried usually got stuck at some point in the construction sequence and rather than ask for help, just got out of the hobby. Check eBay for kits and see how many started kits there are for sale where the owner states he/she is getting out of the hobby. I can't help but wonder.