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I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Non-payment of rent is a straightforward sure-fire cause for eviction practically everywhere. Even jurisdictions that allow a tenant to withhold rent to cover things like emergency repairs usually require a ruling from the housing tribunal to do so.

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Would you support using the full power of the law to recover lost rent? Significant, state-imposed fines for rent that was withheld but owed, even after eviction?

That is an important political question that has relatively little to do with intentional, spiteful "payment"

There are a number of reasons rents paid to landlords are treated somewhat differently from wages paid to workers! Those are deeply political and important, and not super relevant here

In the narrowly relevant question: No one would ever accept a spite-filled "rent" paid to a landlord in the form of oil-covered pennies, provided only as a means of spiting the creditor

If you broke your lease and made your final payment in oily pennies, would that ever be okay?

No, of course not. You are tilting at windmills. No one has suggested non-payment followed by spiteful "payment" would be suitable for a dispute with a landlord.

You have invented a villain who does not exist.

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