Lightning is a bit like hard cash, no government lets its private citizens hold s total of billions of dollars in hard cash any more
It's not down to the government to decide that. Bitcoin is non-negotiable. It's money you can't fuck with. If some citizens, not necessarily all or most, because if they were most, they could overthrow their government, but if
some citizens want to own bitcoin, there's nothing preventing them so. Granted, the government can disincentivize them, with fines, taxes etc., but in the end, they don't control it, in the same way they don't control alcohol.
I'd be this doubtful for the citizens instead. What's the last time you witnessed a friend or relative who's annoyed by the fact that he holds no custody over his funds?
I meant the analogy for technical and not political reasons - LN's liquidity is stored in separate P2P channels, so without injecting more bitcoins into the LN, it's not possible to do 5-digit USD transactions efficiently if someone wanted to do that.