If this were profit driven then surely they would have some method where you could pay them more for longer access, right?
Yes there is, that's what "global priority" is for. It's much more expensive but allows you to go to any country where service isn't blocked for any length of time.
Afaik it was in the past like that - they had a way to buy more international data or something like that
At least some time ago you could retain access by paying for priority blocks of bandwidth.