So, let root access be opt-in rather than opt-out.

Have you ever listened to any scammers operate? People are, for lack of a better word, stupid. They're far too trusting. Anything from Nigerian prince scams to buying Walmart gift cards and giving some random person the number to whatever.

You might say "ah but this is social engineering" and that's true but so is "Hi, this is Brian from tech Support. We need you to change these settings and to install this app on your phone".

Let me put it another way: how do you feel about backdoors into crypto? Just the existence of a backdoor creates an attack vector regardless of whether the designated users misuse use it or not. Just the ability to "opt in" to root access for almost everyone creates way more problems than it solves.

And this is the key point: what benefit does it give users? Because nobody can really answer that other than some hand-waving about "freedom".