If there were a multi-billion dollar industry of scammers always trying to trick them into taking the screws out of things so they could steal from them, then no I probably wouldn't buy them anything with visible screws.
This is a strange argument, kind of like, "We can't defund the police, because look at all of the crime out there!" If there's so much crime occuring already, then what in the world are the police doing?
To an extent, crime can't be eliminated. You can't even eliminate crime by instituting a strict authoritarian regime, because power corrupts, and those in power become criminals themselves. That's why turning big tech companies into paternalistic device authoritarians doesn't work. The big tech companies have become massively corrupt, demanding a 30% cut of everything that happens on your devices, in return for what? Some low paid, low skill reviewer spending a few minutes to approve or reject a third party app submission? That's not security, it's security theater.
There were phone scams before there were smartphones. Before there were mobile phones, when everyone had a landline. There's no technical solution for crime and scams, much as tech people want there to be. Education and viligence have always been the only effective resistance. Unfortunately, the big tech companies don't want to do education; to the contrary, they want consumers to be eternally technically ignorant—despite the increasing importance of computers in our lives—because that's more profitable. At least with cars, we have mandatory driver's education.
Which is probably fine, that's not the same as taking away everyone's screwdrivers.
The problem is that a line is being drawn in an arbitrary place; if scammers are the worry, don't let them have a phone, or internet or email either, in fact just don't let them talk to any strangers in person or otherwise, but that would be awfully inconvenient for them.
Everyone is willing to make a compromise somewhere so long as the compromise isn't something they care about. Some readers probably think the suggestion of taking away their phone or email is absurd to protect them from scammers, and I'd place preventing root-access in the same category; not disabling it by default, I'm ok with that, but preventing it entirely.
My opinion is that everything should be secure by default, but when it's something you own, there should be reasonable, measured steps to "unsecure" it, whether that's removing a couple of screws, or accepting a disclaimer to gain root access to the device you own.
If I don't own it, let's cut the bullshit and tell me I'm merely licensing or renting it, and we'll adjust the price I'm willing to pay accordingly.
