There's a lot of words here that are undoubtedly true to you, but I wanted to single out this statement because I think it's an absolutely unfair assessment of the design philosophy. You cannot accuse the designers of D&D of laziness without some serious evidence to back that up, especially since there are plenty of reasons why "rulings not rules" is a feature and not a bug. You may not like the choice, and I can understand and respect that, but to extrapolate that to cast aspersions on real peoples' character is a step too far.
It's not an abdication of responsibility. It's an invitation to agency.