Why is Monero so critical about Zcash when they have a transparent ledger?

I understand the decoys & while that may have been ok back when Bitcoin started, it's childs play now esp with AI. A 16 anonymity set vs every transaction in a pool that's existed?

Before people start yelling "YEAH BUT CAN YOU TRACE A TRANSACTION" - #1 that's like saying "Since you can't trace my IP address, it's private." #2 The people who can aren't going to advertise it. #3 Isn't AI going to change all of this? Won't horads of stored metadata be dumped and you unwind the chains anonymity for anyone who had bad OPSEC? (Posting some links below)

Zcash basically encrypts the ledger. And you have a 5 mil anonymity set. How is this not infinitely better at privacy?

The only real criticism I've seen is that it doesn't force everyone to use private addresses all the time. BUT

#1 - Isn't it better to have privacy that works (not a transparent chain w decoys)?

#2 - Zashi is forcing everyone to go private before spending money & it's by far the most user friendly crypto wallet I've tried.

I'm sure there will be blowback on this post. Monero intentionally makes itself a scary community - that's the entire marketing gimmick. Which I respect, but I'm interested in the answers to my questions.