It would be like having no pilot ratings below commercial with an instrument rating--who would bother investing that much time and effort if they weren't doing it for a career?
Well, myself for one. And I know others, including some with an ATP they did just for the challenge.
But the difference in your cases is that you weren't a student pilot, subject to all of the student pilot limitations (no passengers, strict instructor supervision, etc) up to that point. How many people do you really think would even bother to
start flight training if they had to get 250 total hours, 40 hours of instrument time, 50 hours cross-country, etc., and pass all of the requisite exams, and spend $30k or more and a couple of years of calendar time, just to be able to take their significant other or child on a flight around the patch on a nice evening? Light GA would pretty much disappear outside of flight schools supplying professional pilots, professional pilots in their spare time, and the occasional really rich guy and their kids.
But back to the topic: There are a lot of states where you have to pay someone to inspect your car every year. Until that philosophy changes, the government will require airplane inspections, done by inspectors that have some sort of license to do so.
I don't know if some kind of inspection requirement will ever go away... but I also submit that the idea that the qualifications for doing the inspections (and indeed, almost any maintenance at all on certified aircraft) should be two years' full-time experience and qualification to work on all aircraft to paying-passenger-carrying standards is unsustainable from a financial standpoint. The FAA itself has even realized this, and proposed in 2013 the "Primary Non-Commercial" category, which would allow certified aircraft to be maintained similarly to how purchased homebuilts are today (owner can do all maintenance including modifications with uncertified parts; A&P must do condition inspection). But this is still just a proposal from an FAA working group, and has not yet been turned into a proposed rule despite the wording already being worked out by that working group.
Honestly, I think the FAA never anticipated the large secondary (used) market that has sprung up for EAB aircraft, and now that it's a reality, they don't know how to manage it.
You're exactly right on this, though I'd argue that the FAA is terrible at anticipating
anything.
The problem is, many (most?) A&Ps are unfamiliar with the regulations applicable (and not) to E-AB aircraft, and without extensive E-AB experience most are probably not familiar with a lot of the technology we have available for our airplanes. Just look at the posts earlier in this thread. There are lots of A&Ps out there are who are legally qualified to perform condition inspections on an RV or other homebuilt, yet haven't touched a light airplane since A&P school a decade or three ago because all they've worked on is heavy jets.
At the same time, you have a fairly large base of very knowledgeable people who have extensive experience building and working on light airplanes, and/or with a professional background in related areas. They would easily be capable of safely maintaining and inspecting and airplane that they owned, whether they built it or not. Yet the only avenue they have to being able to do this involves learning a mass of information and hundreds of hours performing tasks that will never be applicable to the one or two airplanes they will ever own and work on.
Basically, it is my proposal that the FAA should at least (a) implement the P-NC category as described in the Part 23 ARC report from 2013, and (b) create a standard set of procedures or qualifications by which a person, who was not the primary builder of the aircraft, may be issued the repairman's certificate for a specific E-AB aircraft that they own. As I've pointed out
elsewhere, item (b) is of specific personal interest to me.