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Unless things have changed recently the big issue with LN is that it's fundamentally a centralizing force. The idea that everybody is going to open a million channels with every single counterparty (locking coins in the process) is ridiculous. Instead people would just open a couple of channels with big, centralized nodes but that's just Visa with cryptobabble on top.

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No it's not.

Even if everyone had channels with the same, single central node it would have more guarantees than Visa does. The single central node could not just decide to keep everyone's money, as participants have the option to create an L1 transaction to withdraw funds if node they have a channel with misbehaves.

> participants have the option to create an L1 transaction

Theoretically they have that option, but in practice do they?

Theoretically I can sue visa to get the right outcome too, which is a good guarantee

You can close a channel whenever you want, for whatever reason.

What do you mean? Why wouldn't they have that option in practice?

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