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There's always more to learn. What am I missing?

Occam's Razor says that you should select the hyposthesis with the fewest assumptions. Saying Apple is a "rent seeking asshole" assumes that Apple did this maliciously, which is a huge ball of assumptions when they've literally put out a security paper[1] on how Touch ID and Security Enclave works.

[1]:https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

Does that document explain Apple's motivation for bricking phones that never had the fingerprint reader enabled, and that didn't even use traditional lock passwords?

No?

Well, then it makes sense to look elsewhere for that motivation. Additional data appears to be needed. Lacking such data, assumptions are all we have.

Possibly you're stretching for Hanlon's Razor, except you've got the wrong end of it. Hanlon's is the one that says "never assign to malice what can be assigned to stupidity". This feels like a screwup. The reason why it happens is consistent with security. But the effects are maddening.

Looks like you got this one right, and I'm glad to admit it.

Could be. At least your assumption, unlike mine, is testable. If it's an unintentional bug, the policy behind "Error 53" will become more consumer-friendly in an upcoming iOS update. If it doesn't... well, Occam wins the day.

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