I take it you don't work with linux professionally? I'd enjoy being a fly on the wall during the meeting where you convince your boss to run the company critical infrastructure on void linux.
https://devuan.org/os/init-freedom/
The runit init Void Linux is quite slick. I also installed an Artix runit image in a virtual machine that works nicely. We are using it as a supervisor on openSuSE piggybacked onto systemd to run critical infrastructure. It works flawlessly, it's also included in busybox but almost always never enabled.
I tend to avoid systemd so I’ve taken to running Debian machines without it. But if you’re doing something like ephemeral cloud installations then it’s not “worth” the overhead of swapping out your init (and having the consequential reboot and potential instability) so the default is a required target for automation anyway. And if you’ve already set a target then why have another one?
This is why defaults can be harmful if widely deployed and considered non-optional (as systemd is on Debian). They become enforced by convention because they are the only valid common target without wrangling.
For the record, the TC expects maintainers to continue to support
the multiple available init systems in Debian. That includes
merging reasonable contributions, and not reverting existing
support without a compelling reason.