To me the interesting/sad bit is that individually, I can see all of their points; the system is set up in such a way that there is nobody whose job it is to cut through the nonsense and keep the user in mind.

I think “not interesting” is an understatement. Making changes in OS project can be downright abysmal - lack of coherent structure, little to guidance, or even hostility toward contributions…

It’s certainly not entirely because of the attractiveness of the problem itself.

libinput maintainer refuses patches because he doesn't want more settings to be allowed.