Pinch of salt added but however the natural field of view does hold some weight.
What 50mm on 135 format means is a relatively close representation of what we see when looking straight ahead and is regarded as the "normal" focal length.
Of course this changes with format. So using a 50mm on a cropped sensor won't achieve the same field of view as that of full frame (135)
Format. For aps-c normal focal length is around 30mm. what i can remember the normal/standard lens thing goes like this
aps-c=30mm
135=50mm
120=80mm
4X5=120mm
8x10=300mm
i wouldn't go down the road of saying that a 50mm is cheap to produce, try buying a 50mm summicron lol
no, anything can be made cheap and cheerful, but can also be made with quality and performance built in.
So to answer the op original question, your limiting yourself to perhaps a single format.
The bigger you go the wider 50mm gets