I've got good news and bad news for you if you decide to stick with club soccer (and given everything you've said you may not want to). Good news first. If your kids is passionate about it and willing to put in the work, as he advances in age and level it gets better. The parents begin to relax a bit and realize the scores just aren't that important. The coaches aren't under as much tremendous pressure to win. You get a better class of referee. That said, it's not going to be perfect (they threatened to jump my kid a few weeks back and he needed a security escort).
The bad news is in the immediate future it's going to get worse. It's not a rare technique to see more unskilled teams lash out at more skilled teams as a way to keep the score level. There are systems of play, such as the Mexican style, that rely on physicality. There's a certain school of ref, called the "let 'em play" school, that doesn't believe the game should be overly disrupted for fouls that are trifling and they consider soccer a naturally physical game. The refs are overworked and don't want to find themselves in the middle of things with more paperwork when they are struggling just to go from game to game. The leagues are worried about lawsuits, and are reluctant to take action against their customers (which are the clubs, not the players) unless something is really egregious (again more paperwork, for which they don't have the staff, because they'll always be another side to the story that fights the ruling). Your kid will be called the N word, especially in southern California, again not frequently but also not rarely, sometimes from surprising directions (such as people of color and not just white people)...they'll say it in a way the ref doesn't overhear or in a way so the ref doesn't stop the game for a card. Many of the refs don't have the skill to manage a contentious game, which can quickly accelerate from minor fouls, to increasingly harder ones, to fights between players and even parents (yes there are now zero policy rules but it hasn't stopped it completely). The boys are going to get more mass, and their fuses shorter when the testosterone starts flowing. And the bad coaches are everywhere and if your kid is a skilled player that makes a difference in the game, they can be targeted...moreover the boys get more clever about the types of dirty play they can get away with or how to inflict maximum pain as they get smarter.
Worth it? Certainly not to me. Have been trying to get my player to quit for years. From the list of your many complaints (some of which is just impatience, or railing against certain difficult realities that you are just beginning to see as a newb, but this one in particular I regard as pretty legit), it may not be the right thing for you, and as others have pointed out, there are better options.
