"This is true, but do you know why it happens? " Because class actions were not created as vehicles for consumer action, but for efficient justice. They are a judicially created way of doing things to make 20-30 lawsuits involving the same thing, sane. That's it.

Even the main justice who created them "could not conceive of a modern function or a coherent theory for representative litigation."

Even then, rule 48 was opt-in until 1966, when a federal court rule change (IE not a law, just the court rules made up by a few federal judges) changed to make them opt-out.

This is what sprung up the industry you see today.

The rest of what you describe is simply a symptom of not building a coherent platform for mass-action, but instead a way to simplify lawsuits that involved 40 or so people.