I concur with part of your experience (I wrote about it in many of my guides about LN nodes and experiments I've done).

Most of what you describe is also mentioned in my guides, trying to raise an alarm for all those noobs that are jumping straight into running public nodes with no idea what they are doing.

Is very good that old bitcoiners like you are explaining these aspects, so others can learn more and do not do the same steps. I am not saying that were good or bad steps. We are all learning from own mistakes, errors, struggles. Is part of this Bitcoin journey.

What I will want to add to your post are the following.

I see the LN (Lightning Network) as the PAYMENT NETWORK of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin (onchain) cannot go forward without LN. It will be almost impossible to use it as money soon, only using onchain. LN cannot exist and function without a strong base layer (onchain). LN is actually just a delayed onchain tx, no more no less. Is just not broadcast in the moment of the payment, it is broadcast and settled onchain only when the peers are closing that channel. But IT IS a real BTC onchain tx.

The large base of large public nodes with a lot of liquidity, nodes that can last a long time and put a lot of capital at stake. You also earn more money, but they are the ones who put in the most money. We need this strong base of big nodes ! It doesn't matter if are big companies, banks. They are the ones that keep moving the "water".

LSPs (those that are intermediaries between public and private nodes), also with good connections, but not much capital is necessary, but not little either. It is very important for them to have well balanced channels and fees accessible to the "entry level" of users. These LSPs are mainly public nodes by main wallet apps, but also other players that want to be this bridge between public routing and private use of LN

The plebs nodes, the poor ones, who want to learn and level up. But very few are going to resist because they don't have much capital. At this level you were... and you couldn't resist. Nothing wrong with that. You did your part, helping the network as much as you could. And thank you for that.

Private, mobile nodes (Zeus, Blixt, Mutiny, Breez, Electrum, Phoenix, Nayuta etc.) These depend 100% on the LSPs. These private nodes DO NOT ROUTE! Just use privately the LN. And is nothing wrong with this. These are the MAIN real users of LN, because are the ones that made the payments.

This way we will have the LN functional. And new users, should choose wisely their position in this network.