AFCI's are more snake oil and money making venture than something useful for consumers even if that wasn't the original goal it is what it became.
Truer words were never spoken, except by one high-school sweetheart who referred to me as, "rose tinted glasses", and when accused by her betters, cried out "ignorance is bliss," before she shifted my paradigm.
The group paradigm is that UL 1699 and $100 tandem AFCI or GFCI (xFCI) have joined the fraternal order of snake oil, with TV advertisements, "Spam Likely" calls, Medicare Advantage, fake news, toxic water, food poisoning, and mass shooting suspects, all licensed to exploit & invade, in our faces, every corner of privacy or peaceful enjoyment.
Occupants are conditioned to hate the safety devices, and nothing avoids property-tax assessment or building code officials more than real-estate sales, which promptly remove the safety devices that wont worky. The mortgage industry finances owner builders, their hired hacks, and the laborer run remodel industry, and requires mortgage insurance premiums for un-insurable claims, void by any number of construction defects that increase hazards.
When unqualified persons can't see an obvious cause, rather than Megger test, they blame the safety device that wont worky, ignore shock hazards, wont check behind devices, for smoldering equipment, or harmonic noise from unlisted, non-FCC tested junk from Amazon, or inverter appliances.
Technical difficulty with safety devices is a known challenge, especially to illegal laborer's right to work. When it threatened the unskilled labor schemes of US developers, Chamber of Commerce lobbies amended out xFCI devices from local codes in many historically confederate battle grounds over states rights.
Ironically, in states where the safety devices remain on the books, installing them can't be enforced where removed after inspection, since licensed desperadoes ingratiate themselves to any laborer shop willing to use their license, and code enforcement inspectors are less likely ICC certified, not knowing an AFCI from a GFCI.
This economic order of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" detrimentally relies on unskilled labor, or RMO license indentured to management exploits, not a regulatory barrier to market. Plutocracy is the modern order, legislatively de-funding public policy, to exploit regulatory gaps, boost real-estate bubbles, and leverage debt against the blown up mortgages, with occupants removing safety devices, subjecting the property to insurance non-renewal & cancellation.
