From an outside perspective, American system looks more like "right" and "extreme-right", disguised as choice over small-ish policies.
Sadly that's an extreme them-or-us system that's being slowly exported pretty much everywhere else.
Some online banks (don't know how widespread this is) allow you to create "virtual card" that expire either after 1 purchase or at a specific date (and with a set maximum of budget). I use them for every single purchase I make online, it's inconvenient but at least i've never entered my real card info anywhere.
Programming is hard because you need to have a lot of pre-acquired knowledge before you can even start to delve in the only interesting aspect of it, which is the logic solving.
Is like having to learn everything about how a lego brick is built (from the materials used, to the production processes used in the factories, to the composition of the houses where lego bricks are used) before being able to play with them. Everyone (aside from an very motivated subset of people) would find Legos "Hard" in that context.
Having to memorize a myriad of arcane incantations, software setups and a million "standards" will always make programming look "hard" and daunting, even for those who have an interest in logic problems, but not have an interest on babysitting a computer.
I used to have discipline. Don't know what happened.