Cross connects are our industry's $100 gold plated HDMI cables.
In the US maybe. Cross-connect prices are much more reasonable in Europe (€0 - €50/month).
Personally, I don't have a problem with MRCs when ordering cross-connects: data centres are expensive to build and run. But yeah, $300/m is nuts and that price point has zero relationship to the cost of delivery of the service.
[ i know you know this, but i hope you do not mind being a soapbox ] back in the day, the seattle westin building (not the hotel, but a 33 story office building next door) had a smart manager. he had a riser shaft built out and set a very low nrc/mrc for copper and fiber. given the building's copper mmr (meet me room) and a fiber mmr, colos exploded, and now the building is mostly racks, vying for being the largest carrier hotel in the left coast. the six was built and expanded rapidly in this fertile environment. no, the westin is not making millions off of cross-connects, but they do not have rental vacancies. due to the shortage, and maybe price (dunno), of westin space, the six has been extended to a few other buildings; see diagram at bottom of https://www.seattleix.net/topology. this makes sense to me. extensions to distant cities make less sense to me; but i am an old fogey. randy