Do you believe the same thing about a toaster that you don't have a root account for? Do you think people didn't own things before the idea of root was created in the 1970s?
Computers don't have to follow the same design choices as were done 50 years ago.
Toasters are heating elements with slots for bread. The 70s saw ten men walk on the moon and return to Earth to tell us all about it. Whatever point you were trying to make wasn't made.
And phones run apps. Neither require root to be able to accomplish their designed purpose.
And drugs are bad. Neither require root to work. Point not found.
Exactly. Root is unrelated to the problem at hand.
If the toaster acts against my interest and I can't change its behaviour then yes, absolutely.
It doesn't have to be named root, the point is that my device should act in my interest to the fullest extent permitted by the law.
But those running illegal monopolies no longer fear the user and blantantly ignore their choices (yes vs "remind me later" is a good example), if I can't enforce my choice, I don't own that.
Android in fact has an entire Settings app allowing users to configure a lot about the device. There are a lot of choices exposed to users. Exposing this ability to the user didn't require root.
The number of choices exposed to users is irrelevant, what's relevant is that choices which I'd want exposed are not exposed, and without root, there's no extension mechanism which'd let me load my code into for example the system server process.
What you also seem to be ignoring is that the fact that for example there's no simple runtime internet permission toggle is NOT an accident, this functionality is deliberately not directly exposed despite creating no "security risks" and you know it very well.