scaredy: Mutual funds are more convenient, but if you just buy a whole bunch of small investments in large caps, you can harvest tax losses in a way that an identical mutual fund can’t.
flu: Visa and MC and amex make their money on interchange fees, which are higher in the USA than other developed nations. Will they stay that way forever?
If Biden wants to make three large companies angry but a zillion companies that take credit cards happy, he can crack down on the fees. This is not a wild scenario: it already happened in many other nations all over the world.
