They got through at least 3 versions of the butterfly design, and kept using it from early 2015 through late 2019, before finally switching to a new (thinner than pre-2015, but still substantially thicker than the butterfly switch) rubber dome scissor design.

It would have been much better if they had figured out how to cut their losses and revert the keyboards in 2016 or early 2017, even though that would have taken a substantial redesign of the rest of the laptop internals.

Selling 4.5 years of laptops with keyboards that broke easily under ordinary use was a huge black eye for the company.

I’m not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that the issue has been resolved whereas OP stated it was not.

After multiple generations of failure in "premium" laptops (of which I owned more than one), with barely any acknowledgement of any issue whatsoever.

The point is that you said the issue was unresolved when that’s clearly not the case.

I was well aware of scissor keyboards. I owned a 16" MBP.

Given that Apple is still selling, or has only just stopped selling models with the latest butterfly keyboard - the issue may have solution, but hasn't gone away. Millions of laptops have faulty keyboards which, when they break, will be replaced with another faulty keyboard. That's an unresolved issue.