I bet my left nut that the person you responded to claims that they are ok with opening their own channels right now because fees happen to be low lately, and they are ok with running their own lightning node. the person will deny that fees are ever going to be high, even though they are supposed to be high by design in order to pay for security. the person doesn't understand that if everyone used lightning in a sovereign way the base layer would choke and the channel management transactions would become cost prohibitive. he will deny that bitcoin and lightning are sabotaged and the design pushes people into custodians.
Discussion
I agree that the incentives are not aligned.
Also, it's just ridiculous that everybody's going to run their own lightning node. As far as I can tell, it's just going to be another layer for payments between large entities.
maybe people use e-cash and all the lightning stuff happens on the back end.
But anyway you look at it, it's gonna be custodial.
how is it that so many people became okay with that? the whole point of bitcoin was so that you do not have to go through a financial institution i.e. a custodian. using it through a bank it defeats the entire purpose. you get none of its special benefits.