So with the new changes to the servers that seem mostly as a market board balancing mechanic, why not actually put helpful functionality behind the market boards as well, something smart and relatively intuitive?

Make sorting by "demand" actually mean sort by demand, not sort by wish-list. Have it be a function of how many items were sold within a given time frame. SE can set that as whatever number, but then it'll sort, 900 items sold in the last month? slam it at the top, 2 item sold in the last 3 months, drop it to the bottom. Whatever way they reach a similar metric of (items sold)/(time) would be better than the current "demand" which is just a sort by others' wish list. This would give players who want to earn gil a way to properly discern what items to gather/make in a way that they are able to and it'll help encourage market board interaction.