The ethics are not as one-sided as you’re suggesting. Your proposal avoids creating winners and losers among Orchard users, but it does so by socializing losses and inflating the supply. Many people would consider that unethical as well.
ZEC holders acquire ZEC with the expectation that the protocol will enforce its monetary rules and supply limits. Under your proposal, all ZEC holders would bear the costs of counterfeiting, including those who never held funds in the Orchard pool.
Your proposal doesn’t eliminate winners and losers. It just changes who bears the cost.
I agree that Ironwood reflects a value judgment. The value judgment is that preserving the integrity and verifiability of the Zcash supply should take precedence over socializing losses by accepting an inflated supply.
However, I disagree with your claim that we’re obfuscating the consequences of that choice. We have been transparent that, in the unlikely event counterfeiting occurred, some legitimate Orchard users could be unable to withdraw funds. For example, in the OP, we state:
As a result, if counterfeit funds were withdrawn before legitimate funds, a user would be unable to recover some or all of their legitimate Orchard funds.
The diagrams in the OP also make that consequence clear. We make similar points in our previous Ironwood proposal. Given that, I don’t think it’s accurate to characterize our discussion as obfuscation. We have been explicit about that possibility rather than avoiding it.