Surely this time it will be different!
Discussion
You don't understand the difference between p2p decentralized systems that are self hosted,
Vs.
Client to server systems that are never self hosted.
Never self hosted... now. In the 90s, having your own mail server and website was fairly common. Things change.
Nothing is stopping LN from just being client - server in the future.
Ofc there is.
Not saying it will happen for sure. Hopefully it will not, but it's a reasonable possibility given past historic trends.
I don't think so,
Even if there are big players, they have an incentive to keep their counterparts in check by always keeping consensus.
That consensus always allows me to send you money p2p with our own private channel.
This will always be available to us imho.
They have more incentive to collude between them and make it harder for smaller independent nodes.
Each node on the network is just that, a single node.
The incentive is to keep the network as is, and once established is almost impossible to change due to competitive behaviors.
The problem with centralized services is that there is no good way to interact without it.
With LN there is a good way to interact & it will only get better as the network evolves.