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Podcasts don’t do it because good transcription costs money. Audiobooks already do it, it’s called … the book.

And I’ve heard that 3rd party audiobook transcription violate’s the written book’s copyright (different publishers perhaps?)

It's not even related to the publisher, they're two different products that are separately licensed. Generally the publisher only retains some rights to the book and how they may use it and same goes for the audio book, with the difference that the recordings are owned by those that produced the recording and not the original writer (unless it's licensed as so).

Podcasts are taking over one off content like daily radio programs, so the quantity is huge.

Audio book subtitles could be more useful if they highlighted what was just read instead of the whole page. Possibly with TTS alternative pronunciations or spelling aloud upon request.

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