This is a really insightful piece which I mostly agree with. But I must point out that the "standardization" which you complain about could bee seen as our field simply maturing. Every field of science and even art goes through periods of maturation and standardization. UX design began as a lawless wild west where everyone was experimenting and nobody knew what they were doing. Now that we understand how to measure design success it's only natural that we'd start repeating the things that work and dropping that things that don't.

Has this led to all designs starting to look the same? yes, and I hate that just as much as every other designer. But I disagree that it's turned all designers into replaceable commodities. I certainly don't feel that about myself, and neither do any of my clients. Perhaps recent grads with little industry experience could be seen as commodities, but once you reach a certain level of experience you become invaluable. It's those of us who are young enough to have been educated after this maturation and standardization already happened which may suffer the most from this, because they've never even known a time when design had more room for experimentation and creativity.

I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusion (and it's something I have to remind myself of frequently). Our industry is in desperate need of designers who continue to push the boundaries and try something new - even if sometimes that means mistakes and failures. That is, after all, how we got to where we are now, and the only way we will continue to evolve rather than stagnate.

I wrote a bit of a rebuttal here: https://uxdesign.cc/no-standardization-doesnt-stifle-creativity-c894f64e21b1