1. Lightning is only necessary because the dev team refuses to scale the base layer.
When you weren't looking we scaled bitcoin twice this year and nearly 5 years ago!
No one would open lightning channels if the fee for getting on the base layer was under 1 cent
Wrong.
LN provides a very fast way of making virtually unlimited number of transactions in a secure and decentralized way, with the cherry of increased privacy on top.
Whether it costs 1 cent to open a channel or not is not changing that.
Basically Lightning is a conflict of interest with what is best for bitcoin users and unnecessary centralization of the means of transferal.
This is a vague statement. What conflict of what interests? And what do YOU consider "best for bitcoin users" and what is this "centralization" you mention here?
2. The lightning network could be repurposed to be much more usable by dropping bitcoin from it entirely. I have illustrated an idea in 2017
Sorry, I'm not going to read the link but it's a free world feel free to start a network without a blockchain (ie. LN without bitcoin) and introduce it as a solution and see if people use it or not.
I personally would love to see an innovation...