“ Surely someone can educate us on what the differences are between a $500 AR and a $1500 AR.”
There used to be a guy named Pat Rogers who ran classes and one of his classes was usually 1000 rounds in 2 days. He kept notes on what ran trouble free and what didn’t. Things started to stand out and as he would say “we call this a clue”. If you use a gun hard, you’ll know what the difference is.
If you won’t ever put 1000 rounds on the gun in your lifetime, it won’t matter.
Not many $500 guns made it but it didn’t take a $1500 gun either. For starters look at Colt or BCM and see what differences you can see. Do they make your gun better or not so much?