The real shame here is that the fall-out won’t be as sudden and the people who ought to be getting the brunt of it will manage to squirm out of any responsibility.

Thank you for the wise way of putting this, because I was getting excited with the whole "too subtle and sudden approach of justice to escape it" opposite emotion-driven interpretation, where dangerous fools always escape justice with some scratches, leaving others to suffer, but this time they will get complacent. Like with debt or with antivaxxer ideas.

While I get what you're saying, you don't actually need POTS service on a copper line to have DSL work. I used to sell DSL circuits without telephony services in one of my first technology jobs. We'd order "dry circuits" and pipe data only through Copper Mountain or Paradyne branded gear (pretty sure both companies are dead now). Most telephone companies wouldn't let you do this because they wanted to prop up POTS line sales, not because it was technically necessary.