The reason this question is so hard to answer is because it is not a technical question, it is a moral and ethical one. The links presented start to approach the issue being discussed in this light but do not entirely accept the right question. I suspect this is because it seems rather absurd.

We shall analyze some popular responses in this light.

Systemd is easy to work around! http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html

except, https://lobste.rs/s/y5skqt/avoiding_systemd_isn_t_hard/comments/eayjn3#c_eayjn3

but http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html gives some decent counterpoints,

which http://lwn.net/Articles/619992/ either supports or is ambivalent about.

They all basically boil down to "someone is doing the work, and if it is a better way to do it it will be okay." Except this isn't true. The proof by contradiction is exceptionally simple:

If this was a just world, Lennart's pants would be on fire.

Lennart's pants are not on fire.
Therefore, this is not a just world, and justice must be manufactured.

You might ask why his pants (and the pants of most systemd supporters) would be on fire. Well,
https://pappp.net/?p=969 clearly explains how FLOS is not UNIX, and
the easy counterpoints get thoroughly trashed http://lwn.net/Articles/440843/, and
http://blog.lusis.org/blog/2014/11/20/systemd-redux/ here's a guy agreeing and suggesting everyone hit the big red EJECT.

Why UNIX? Well, because that's just a concise, easy-to-phrase proxy for the deeper issue of
https://pay.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2k5b7e/the_concern_isnt_that_systemd_itself_isnt/ (aside: read the C++ in the kernel tangent if you are not familiar, it seems to mirror this argument taking place and notably, Linus has chosen a side on that one!)

which is echoed here http://lwn.net/Articles/440843/

and here http://lwn.net/Articles/576078/

and here http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ (start with unix philosophy)

and here http://lwn.net/Articles/494605/.

Once upon a time I met a very masterful troll who got me to say precisely what I needed to say precisely when I did not want to say it. What he got me to say was:
>Oct 27 06:05:30 <*******> I study the orthodoxy consistently[sic]
>Oct 27 06:05:38 <R0b0t1`> To find its flaws, yes

So did Lennart &co. study the orthodox to learn from its failures? Did they construct a conservative (re)implementation of the software exhibiting those failures? It has been shown and continues to be shown that: no, they are flying by the seat of their pants. A solution could have been constructed which requires far less labor. Not only far less of their labor, but far less labor for everyone else using a *nix. But they did not thoroughly investigate such avenues, even within their reimplementation! They are recreating bugs! It is impossible for them to claim they are doing it over to do it right, as they have already failed at that purpose.

They have been shown to have wasted effort and continue to do so. When labor is scarce, that is the most unethical action one can undertake.

On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Marc Joliet <marcec@gmx.de> wrote:

Am Fri, 21 Nov 2014 01:32:16 -0600
schrieb Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@gmail.com>:

[...]
> I highly recommend the article John Corbet wrote for LWN a week ago:
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/619992/
[...]

Thanks for the link, it was a good read.

FWIW, I found this linked in one of the comments:

http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/

Both articles echo thoughts that I have more and more with every "discussion"
regarding systemd.

My takeaway is similar to that of the lwn.net article (that is, both sides are
being unnecessarily thick-headed), and find it remarkable how much I recognise
from "discussions" here on gentoo-user (in contrast, gentoo-amd64 has been much
more level-headed). However, I disagree with with the categorisation at the
end, mainly because I hate it when people have to sort each other into "camps",
so that they know who to hate and who to like (which isn't the author's fault,
I think, politicised discussions tend to go that way as they intensify), but
also because I think it is too strict and doesn't account for overlap (for
myself I see reasons for both being and not being in either group).

Greetings
--
Marc Joliet
--
"People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup