...
i don't know what scale you use when you say "enormously expensive" but it sounds like you have never bothered trying to run a bitcoin node before you make this statement. of course you aren't downloading a tiny app like a music player that takes up 20 MB!! but the cost is by no means "enormous". not to mention that there are a lot of different options to reduce the resources it needs such as limiting upload rate, connection count, storage space,...
I was about to say that and looked for a similar comment.
I guess OP wanted to say mine Bitcoin not run a node, because running a node is pretty cheap. For most people a 1TB drive is very affordable and that + any computer, even an outdated one is enough to run a node. You can even buy an old laptop for $100 and run a node on it.
What I meant was that for ordinary people wanting to use Bitcoin as a payment instrument, the $100 laptop seems overly expensive. You wouldn't pay $100 just to have your payment card working. Or maybe you would - depends on the part of the world you live in.
(I myself run several nodes, two of them are full nodes, one of them serves as a backend for LN node. But that's not how majority of people would use Bitcoin, so..)
What governments can make expensive is mining as increasing the cost of power can make it impossible to mine in a given country. That does make BItcoin dependant on the government. You can't effectively ban it but you can ban mining and you can ban fiat trading.
That's another possible attack vector from governments. I would say they have a lot of options now.
You all are right, Bitcoin didn't literally
promise anything. But we all had the same expectations, hadn't we?