You have to be careful to distinguish what's going on here and who you are getting the IP addresses from.
When RIPE is out, the only way to get more addresses is by buying or renting them from somebody else who has a commercial interest to sell or rent you IP addresses or to control what you are doing with them.
With RIPE running out, there is no more way to get an IP address without asking a commercial third party for permission to be a part of the internet.
This will lead to a further centralization of the internet as the owners of big blocks will make sure that their blocks get even bigger so they can ask for rent for what was previously available for (mostly) free.
This isn't about saying that this is the end of the internet and the end of the ability for people to get on the internet, but it's definitely a huge change in landscape that we are going to feel as time goes on and we still refuse to go IPv6
Which makes sense considering that the exact same companies who would need to do something to get IPv6 going are also the same companies who have the most to gain from address scarcity.
When did they cry wolf over this? They've made various announcements at each stage of running out, but this is the first time they've announced that they have more pending LIR applications than blocks to assign to them.
When RIPE is out, the only way to get more addresses is by buying or renting them from somebody else who has a commercial interest to sell or rent you IP addresses or to control what you are doing with them.
With RIPE running out, there is no more way to get an IP address without asking a commercial third party for permission to be a part of the internet.
This will lead to a further centralization of the internet as the owners of big blocks will make sure that their blocks get even bigger so they can ask for rent for what was previously available for (mostly) free.
This isn't about saying that this is the end of the internet and the end of the ability for people to get on the internet, but it's definitely a huge change in landscape that we are going to feel as time goes on and we still refuse to go IPv6
Which makes sense considering that the exact same companies who would need to do something to get IPv6 going are also the same companies who have the most to gain from address scarcity.