I have lots of thoughts about this. I never like to see the price of something increase, and the reasons for the increase in this case are not anything anyone wants. On the other hand, for me personally I feel like chocolate is far too prevalent, at least in the US, and if it led to more variety in desserts and candy I'd be happy.
Carob seems relevant to this? I know the associations from the 70s and 80s but I sort of feel like that was a marketing or framing problem rather than a taste problem. Substitute anything never goes over well.
I also feel like what's happening with cocoa and chocolate is representative of a lot of agricultural products today. Vanilla prices skyrocketed at some point in recent memory for similar reasons and haven't recovered, and there's similar tradeoffs involved there, with companies doing all sorts of things to offer alternatives to expensive pure natural vanilla or inexpensive artificial vanilla.
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