I ask my non aviator friends if they have their car brakes serviced every 100 hours of driving. They obviously don't, but they still depend on them as a critical safety device every intersection.
I think there is too much maintenance on aircraft. Humans are willing to wear any risks associated with something if the utility is high enough.
-Living in Latrobe Valley next to a smoke factory [tick]
-Accepting a giant liquid chemical storage facility near major populations [tick]
-Standing room + No seatbelts on a train/bus [tick]
-Smelling that nice benzene, cancer-causing fumes at petrol stations [tick]
Ok the list is endless, yet the utility/safety/legislation is unbalanced with aviation. I'd like to see a study pair up flying experience/currency improving safety against lesser maintenance standards, like getting rid of TBO's and doing maintenance by inspection (oil analysis, etc). On a tangent, what kind of stupid idea is it pulling a new engine to pieces after ~2000hrs, then adding that rebuild risk to what could have otherwise been a nice working engine for another 2000hrs+.
My hypothesis would be that making aviation cheaper, thus encouraging more flying and experience would be equally as safe per million hours flown. And if not, divide by a utility score so if the productivity and usefulness increase from more flying rates, then we should be willing to accept the same safety standards as a motor vehicle, public bus or train in GA.
Shagpile, the challenge for aviation (especially GA) is that it's a realm of human activity that's outside of most people's understanding and knowledge, therefore when an accident happens there appears to be terrible unquantifiable and unknowable risks that strike fear into the hearts of ordinary people who have no reference for what's happened.
Like has already been noted, at any given period like the one being discussed, many people are going to die in road crashes. Most people in the community abhor road crashes but will agree with an authority figure such as a police commissioner when that person appears on TV during a holiday period and makes a direct appeal that people need to slow down, not drink and drive, monitor their fatigue levels, obey the rules, take care, etc. What will virtually never happen though is people or groups in response to serious accidents calling for cars to be banned because (unlike the "mystery" of why an aircraft has crashed), it's generally fairly obvious what has caused a road crash (even the seemingly ridiculous ones where two cars travelling in opposite directions have a head-on for no apparently valid reason).
Unfortunately we'll always be subject to more "safety" rules, checks and balances that are of a dubious level of genuine risk reduction (like your 2000 hr TBO example that I agree is a poorly thought through ruling...often provocative rather than preventative maintenance) because we're involved in something regular people don't understand except that it's "terribly dangerous...." and when something is not understood, out comes nanny-state style of "protecting the public" rule making that's a response to fear, hence often not effective.
I think your hypothesis that safety levels would increase if it was less expensive has a fair degree of validity up to a point (i.e. if it's too cheap we'll have a different set of issues).