I've been self hosting since 2012 or so and it is a mixed bag. Deliverability is fine provided you're on a clean IP range, which generally only reputable hosts have.
There was a moment when my son was born and he was in NICU that my mail broke. I just went without for a while. Not ideal.
Since then I've thought: self hosting is nice but hosting cooperatively is probably the best way forward. Democratic control might beat technical control. I'll do it soon, I think: I'd be fascinated to know what people think.
> Covering the US with broadband is much harder than Switzerland.
I don't think anyone is suggesting the US be covered with broadband, just the bits where people live. That then becomes a comparable problem, insofar as Switzerland has comparable size communities (with the exception of the very largest end of US cities whose population exceeds that of Switzerland)
I'm pretty sure the actual forge we deserve at this point is one that is a membership organisation, eg, owned by its (paying) members.
Members elect the board which chooses the CEO. A cooperative, in other words. The tech is a solved problem, with lots of open source around to do it. Enough members means paid operations and development staff, or outsourcing one or both, or grants to open source devs, etc. The possibility is there.
That's how we prevent cultural drift: by actually controlling the company.
As a westerner (UK) I massively idealise Mondragon and wouldn't find it weird if anyone else did. Cooperatives are fascinating and the question of workplace democracy needs more consideration.
I love it. I think I'm going to have fun with this and possibly learn a bit, too. I'm pondering a container based dev environment at the moment and might throw it in with busybox and see how far I get :)