MrSmith0011000100110's Journal: Verizon lockdown as bad as AT&T?

I'm one of the unfortunate many Verizon Wireless customers. I've just picked up my "upgrade" phone, the LG Voyager(A beautiful piece of gadgetry). As I peruse the interweb searching for cool hacks and fun things I can get away with on this phone, I've stumbled across many a site that states that my phone's feature set is "crippled" by Ma Bell. Hold on, you mean I've just paid close to $400 for the only available(and feasible) IPhone killer on the Verizon network and for some strange reason it's feature limited? Why would a carrier shoot themselves in the foot like this? If I was given a superior product to re-sell and then dumbed it down, wouldn't that be akin to dumbing down my profit margin as well? I understand that the Verizon "Get It Now" system is in place to make the phone giant even more gi-normous but I'm not ok with paying full retail price for my phone and have it not only carrier bound but feature bound as well.

I've yet to see a full list of features that are/were removed from the Phone, so my questions are these:

1. What am I missing?

2. This seems to be a common practise of cell phone carriers(not to be confused with vendors), how do we as consumers/end users make this stop?

3. Is there any way to undo this feature limiting and get what I paid for?