[perching_aix]

I do see pretty massive problems with it, such as those you list off, but the unfortunate truth is that one cannot know or do everything themselves. So usually it's not even a choice but a coercive scenario.

For example, say I want to ensure my food is safe to eat. That would require farmland where I can grow my own food. Say I buy some, but then do I have the knowledge and the means to figure out whether the food I grew is actually safe to eat? After all, I just bought some random plot of farmland, how would I know what was in it? Maybe it wasn't even the land that's contaminated but instead the wind brought over some chance contamination? And so on.