Yes, god forbid you'd stop your production chain just because you found an internal consistency error that could potentially wreak havoc with your data. Oh, wait, that's exactly what you should be doing. If you write C/C++ without asserts, you are driving fast and drunk without a seat belt.

Luckily it's a free world so you are more than welcome to take libzmq, strip out all the asserts, and launch your new improved fork! Why even debate this? Please remember us when you get rich and famous.