Having a handful of authorities means we can direct our limited resources at scrutinizing those authorities. Which we do, to great effect. It's not perfect, such a system will never be perfect, but it keeps improving. It's a lot better in 2026 than it was in 2016, and it was a lot better in 2016 than in 2006. In 1996 this is all new and the CAs have basically no idea what they're doing, what's a domain name? Their employees aren't using Tim's toy hypermedia service, it's for nerds.

The resources available to check that Edith's friend Frank's cousin Gerald is trustworthy are zero and when trusting Gerald goes badly, what do we do? "Oh, huh, be more careful"? It's not actionable at all.