Comment by tptacek

The short certificates aren't just a random opinion LetsEncrypt had that they decided to inflict on everybody; it's a recognition of the fact that revocation doesn't work, and so it's important to reduce the blast radius of a compromised certificate. There's now a broad consensus on this in the field. I understand your frustration, but you're going to have to get used to this one.

It is, pretty obviously, not a weird scheme to get you to pay for certificates at some other CA.