I do not think lightning is as easy, or intuitive people say it is, and people who propose it typically tend to utilize centralized services which address most of the harder aspect to it.

It's not about what's easy for a 120+ iq European/American earning $65,000 to $130,000+/year could do it.

It's about whether or not someone in a poor region could open, and self host a lightning channel.

I would say I'm a fairly competent person myself, and I have dabbled with lightning as well, and I am aware of people who I believe to be more technically capable, and more intelligent than me, who have also had issues especially with routing, etc. Including Bitcoin Maxis who preach the virtues of lightning.

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There are plenty of good mobile self custodial LN solutions that Paul refuses to even download

If one crosses the street one can get hit by a bus. Its a central flow.

If one flies with a plane the plane can crash. Its a central flow.

He is probably not flying with a plane, driving with a car or crossing streets.

the base chain can't support enough people doing channel maintenance

Lightning is hard and far from perfect... Just like every other solution, it has tradeoffs. I don't know the stats, but lightning gets a LOT of use, so I don't know why anyone would say it's useless.

Financial sovereignty is hard, and no it's not cheap. For 99.99% of people using Bitcoin does require some amount of trust... Very few can actually verify all the open source tech they are using, it's about limiting that trust in comparison to other monetary solutions.

A poor person, who you are clearly very concerned about, can't use any crypto without internet access... So should we all just pack up and go home? Internet is expensive after all, way more expensive than opening a lighting channel.