Excellent Post
What a great analysis of why GA is doomed. $120 for a wheel bearing with an aviation stamp, $20 for the bearing at the local. Will the cheaper bearing fail before the aviation bearing, unlikely, but jack the aircraft rotate the wheel and find out. Trying to prevent Darwin from taking the dumb is dragging the whole population down to the lowest common denominator and destroying productivity.
The reason RAA-AUS was thriving is because risk management of maintenance and flying was left to the individual and commonsense prevailed. Yes people died who didn't know what they were doing but one could argue that death didn't allow them to contaminate the gene pool. Now RAA-AUS has grown so large that the influx of idiots has to be protected from themselves and RAA-AUS has morphed into GA. A victim of its own success.
Try making the simplest modification to a GA aircraft such as putting in an aftermarket Dynon EMS. No TSO but now well proven and cheaper than a JPI with twenty times the functionality. An improvement in safety but not allowed. Every GA aircraft should be fitted with synthetic vision for as little as $6000 but aircraft the world over are still CFIT'ing on a regular basis. Try trusting a LAME's judgment over very simple changes instead of a 20 page engineering order. Get rid of magnetos and replace with solid state electronics like everyone else did 30 years ago.
The price of GA has become horrendous this is why everyone has gone to RA
but don't hold your breath because CASA is stepping in there too. Very soon I will start building my own aircraft so I can control my own destiny. It is the dreamers that created aviation and suppressing the dreamers will destroy innovation.