I believe there is an opportunity cost for not using a credit card in US: you don't build your credit history. This might leave you disadvantaged in the future because... the finance industry (as an extension, the society) is structured in a way that you must have a good credit history.
But you have a point with circularity and arbitrarity. Credit is basically about trust, and the thing with trust is that you already need trust to build more trust. When do you start trusting people to take loans is just as arbitrary as when a person attains the age of majority.
I don't know if you're trying to characterize my remarks above, but if so, this is inapposite.
I claimed the fees were a shell game, which implies having them isn't significantly better or worse.
If they weren't hidden, it would be clearer how much interest was being paid, but people who pay a low rate would probably still want to borrow.
I do feel like there is more fraud protection with credit cards as they currently exist, which is not to say that is specifically tied to a detail like fees not being regulated.
It seems all around logical and reasonable to me to want to pay a few basis points more in fees in exchange for fraud being someone else's problem. It's not just a fee for service, but also aligning incentives.
If your bank can take the position that fraud is (virtually) impossible, that's not just inconvenient when you happen to be an unlucky victim, but it minimizes their motivation to prevent anything that contributes to it.
I'm not sure why Americans say that credit cards with 3% fees would be better than this system, and make fun of Europeans for not wanting to use credit cards. To me it just feels like US finance industry tricked everyone into choosing the more expensive product since they hid the costs of it from the person making the choice. But when people has to pay the real costs of credit cards then basically nobody wants one.