You're not being fair here. You're incorrectly blaming the community and calling them "Karens". It's ultimately a decision made by Battlefield Studios to manage server capacity. It's really odd that there's this global server quota that's this low, when every person should in theory be able to host their own server. This is something they specifically advertised.
Having a global quota is likely a financial decision. I doubt it has anything to do with them trying to bully "casuals". The people that are in remote areas with too few people to play with, have the exact same issues. I don't think it's ever their intention to completely bar you from progressing through the game. From what I can tell they don't intend to completely remove progression from bots, but they are making it so that bots offer a heavily reduced amount of XP.
My guess is that the current implementation is just a stopgap effort to ensure that portal remains useable, while they will further refine the system in the future to deal with a use case such as yours. I think there's nothing wrong with encouraging players to play against real players as much as possible, but if there's such a large skill disparity, then perhaps it would be better if you're given the ability to play with others of a similar skill level.
I fully agree with you that servers should be rentable though. It's great for community building, as well as keeping the game alive even if official support has stopped.
They promised full progression on Portal servers, they need to keep that promise
