Doug,
I agree with your points.
#1 we can’t do much about.
#2 In the classes I am familiar with, Rotax and TaG, I think allowing unnecessary things like front brakes, modified carbs, and using tires (Mojos) that you can’t (wouldn’t) use anywhere else drive up the costs (at $1000/kart).
#3 There are WAY too many classes. I have no idea of what they all are. When I was racing cars, typical fields were 25-30 cars, with as many as 50 occasionally. That was a lot of fun. Even CSC TaG Master with 17 karts seems small to me. I would think that with all the interest in racing that NASCAR has recently generated, there must be a huge potential group of racers to be tapped.
Charles