The key question is: should it be so? Or: wouldn't the world be a better place if we had some equilibrium between web and desktop apps?

No.

But I can see this thread is populated with Delphi diehards.

I'm definitely not a Delphi diehard, but I tend to think it's a good thing to have computation done on my largely powerful enough, instead of it being done on a small VM at the other side of the world which doesn't provide me with any control over my data.

I have nothing to do with Delphi. But I miss the time when users were in control of their data, and you could still use your computer normally offline.