It’s a natural consequence of the high demand for single-make racing. Manufacturers aren’t going to stop building engines, they have to react to market demand. Instead of 6 manufacturers racing in one class we now have 6 different classes or concepts. Complexity is just transferred from one place to the other. Even the cure ‘TaG’ just made everything even more complicated.
The nature of racing makes it very difficult to manufacturers to sustain a monopoly as well which can reduce some of the inherent complexity single-make racing brings for new people to karting. Single-make customers only really allow a certain amount of development, so even if a manufacturers grabs a big chunk of the market with a product which is miles better than everything else (like Rotax did, for all my 100cc I can recognise why the MAX was popular) over time it can’t out-innovate the competition without destroying its customer base. The rivals eventually catch up and everything splinters again. Rotax couldn’t innovate within the MAX market share so tried RM1 and it didn’t work. They’ve tried the electric thing, but that seems to have been invisible this year.
There’s not real solution to this. The suggestion of emulating the CIK, in my view, doesn’t represent something realistic. Europe isn’t a bastion of simplicity. It’s just as complicated and sporadic as the states. Europe isn’t a homogeneous market and there is just as much diversity in classes and products. In the UK tracks are actually de-affiliating with the MSA and embracing the IKR concept. So they get their own insurance and write their own rules.
But back to the point. To me it seems perfectly logical a manufacturer has to build and sell engines. If they don’t they go out of business.