So I would not mix the two issues of a problem being a real problem and people's lack of knowledge about the software licensing world or software in general. Just because people don't know what the actual root cause is, it does not mean, that the problem does not exist, or that the people will not care about consequences, that will affect them.
I will also say,that without idealism of many great people creating free software and little pockets of free society, we would not be, where we are today. A very general statement, I know, but I have no doubt in my mind, that the idea of making knowledge freely available and making sure it stays that way does help advance society in many areas.
I'm not sure what you mean by philosophical vs practical. The problem is past that point and is really is not related to either of those, it's a legal problem: a user wants the source code, the license says they're entitled to receive it, but the distributor is violating the license by refusing to provide it to the user. Or at least that was my read anyway.
If it turns out a GPL app doesn't have the source available, then it's kind of a moot point. No fix can be made, and I probably wouldn't keep it installed either. ;)
Also, non-compliance with a copyright license effectively means “stealing”. So the government is effectively buying stolen goods from Amazon and Boston Group.
Do you have a good source for that? (No, a random tweet isn't a good source.)