YouTube is not obligated to host and serve content for free forever.
As many other big tech companies they have a very strong position in the market (edging into monopoly / duopoly territory), which essentially prevent competitors with different business plans to be successful.
To me this sounds like the market is broken and warrants a critical investigation.
That seems worse? All these videos that I uploaded become inaccessible just because I'm not around to approve monetization?
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
What if a backblaze or other backup service just decided it the copyright on all uploaded files after 1 month of non payment and started selling people’s home movies as stock footage?
This is like when you put into a contract "Party A may withdraw from this contract at any point" and then you withdraw at some point. That's playing by the rules.
If you want to make changes to your assets after you die, write a will and hire an executor.
The living aren't obligated to negotiate with the dead.
If your alive you fight such things by suing the company, but the dead don’t make such choices.
Are people going to need to stipulate in their will to delete all uploaded content to stop crap like this?